My Discovery of Magic
by irdgad
Summary: The Horcrux in Harry has a different effect on him due to the magics his parents used before his birth. Find how a Harry slightly different from the one we know takes on the world. The first chapters suck. Hopefully improved with the latest ones. R
1. Chapter 1: History

_**Author Note:**_

_Chapter 1 has been reposted_**. I've made a few small changes in content and format. Hope it's a better read now.**

Disclaimer:_Harry Potter and other characters from the book belong to J.K.R _

I have been reading fanfiction for around five years now and this story will have ideas I got reading other works. I hope it has enough original ideas to make it worth reading.

**Summary**: This story details the journey of Harry Potter during his discovery of the theory of magic, of himself and his use of these to become one of the greatest wizards the world has ever known.

**My Discovery of The Theory of Magic**

Chapter 1: History

The enlightened period of the magical world truly started when Walburga Black decided that she would prove once and for all that wizards were without doubt superior to non magical humans.

She came to this decision after a lengthy discussion with a distant relative of hers, old Jack Corvin. Corvin had been an unspeakable in the department of mysteries. He had a brilliant intellect and refused to believe anything without proof.

He wanted solid a solid theory backed by irrefutable proof. During his days in the Department, he had studied the theory of magic. His study had directed him to the muggles and their in depth study of every possible phenomena that they encountered.

Wizards had been taking and using theories that muggles developed for the past two hundred years in secret. They had during this time applied these theories and their ability with magic, an energy source the muggles had no idea existed to get a better understanding of the rules governing the universe.

They had built up on scientific theories, adding an extra source of energy that only they could access and manipulate. Magical children did get a very through grounding in the understanding of the rules governing matter in their study of transfiguration, charms and potions.

The basics of what the muggles called thermodynamics, classical mechanics, atomic theory, fluid mechanics, were understood by a fifth year in Hogwarts. They were essential after all to understand the subjects in the higher classes.

They had discussed a variety of topics. The concept of magic being a form of energy was very well understood in the 17th century. But modern day theorists had still not come up with a proof of where or how it came into being. The interaction of magic with matter was studied in depth during the early 19th century.

The muggles development of electronics was the main reason for the tremendous world wide effort to quantify magic. Until then, no muggle invention could detect magic. Electronic items though were affected, and thus would be able to detect it.

The development of the methods to hide magic from muggles was hastened and completely developed by 1951. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sure enough good motivation. From then onwards, for every major scientific theory the muggles developed, a magical analogue was developed within a few years.

A worldwide effort to develop ward schemes to hide and if necessary, protect the magical world from every new development in weapons and technology was initiated and implemented by the International Confederation of Wizards in 1953 after a near total exposure of the magical world in the United States which required wizards from all over the world to control and finally completely cover up.

The America's had the misfortune of becoming the safe heaven for magical criminals. The vast continents had sparsely populated magical communities that were easy targets for powerful practitioners. The magical community of the US was rather small and the law was usually dealt by the rich and powerful families. In stark contrast to the muggle community, the magical community was highly disorganized. The witch trials had made the magicals highly distrust the non magicals and most methods developed by them.

The muggleborn had started trying to set down a functioning government, but were put down by the powerful families. These powerful families controlled the exploitation and export of the continents huge magical flora and fauna. The entire continent was still the Wild West in the magical community.

The poorer wizards and witches were tired of the oppression and had banded together and in true American spirit, started a fight with the established magical goons. The magical and muggle death toll was rising very fast.

This had finally led to the ICW to intervene. They had put down the revolt, held nation wide elections and established the basic law system that the people could build up on. They created a permanent base in the US to fully educate the magical population on magic and the dangers of exposure.

Until then, there were only small magical communities. Since then, the magical population of the US has increased tremendously both in power and number. They are at present the leading country in the development and worldwide implementation of security measures against muggles.

During their discussions, Jack Corvin had mentioned all these points to Walburga. He stated that with all this information, it could only be concluded that we were hiding from the muggles, scared of them. So how could the magical population superior to the non magical one?

As far as Walburga was concerned any species that wantonly destroyed or at minimum severely polluted the very source of our life had to be put down or at least controlled. This was one of the major reasons for the present generation of purebloods hating muggles to near fanatic levels.

To them the earth was almost sacred. They never needed to take more from the earth than it could replenish. It was difficult for them to accept the idea that anyone could be so greedy and foolish that they were making unlivable their only home?

But muggles had to destroy anything they touched. They wasted away entire countries worth of land in their quest for riches without any heed to the damage they were causing. Their uncontrolled exploitation had caused the extinction of over three hundred species of prominent magical flora and fauna in the past fifty years due to pollution.

They seemed to be showing no signs of slowing down their destruction of the earth and everything in it in any way. A community that seemed to want the annihilation of everything including itself was not worth being called civilized or enlightened.

There was a strong movement at that time in the magical community to improve warding methods and make sure that every resource that had been polluted beyond reasonable levels by muggles, including air and water be filtered by the wards before reaching the magical community.

The news about the possible deployment of satellites that could look through their present muggle repelling charms and led to the warding of many millions of square kilometers of land that had magical beings in them with improved wards. Every year more was being warded with these new muggle repelling charms to prevent both destruction and detection.

Walburga Black, the foremost magical theorist of Britain and powerful witch herself, using the intensive resources of the Black family had then hired a large number of magical theorists from all over Europe to study the difference between magical and non magical beings.

It was the largest effort by a private or governmental organization in this field. She had broken the basics of the known theory into small problems that were supplied to her employees. Only with all parts of the theory could a proper understanding of the framework be obtained. While many of the employees had guessed the purpose of the research, all of them were sworn to secrecy for a period of thirty five years after the completion of the theory.

Hearing of her work, some major proponents of the wizarding supremacy advocates asked to be allowed to help. She agreed to accept monetary help from them with their promise that they would leave her free to conduct her research as she saw fit. They agreed on the condition that they were told the final results of the work. At one point, about seven years into the work, there were around nine hundred and fifty people working on the quest for the theory of magic.

As the years progressed though, the trend she observed from experiments and statistics was deeply disturbing. The muggleborns were not inherently weaker in power. It was shown that in terms of Magical Channeling Capacity, they were the same as purebloods.

However, they did seem to lack most of the specific traits in magic the purebloods had achieved with over seven hundred years of selective marriages.

Many families had achieved affinity to specific fields of magic by careful marriages with those who also showed the gift. These traits were highly prized in the magical community.

Some had an affinity for transfiguration, some for potions, a few for divination and so on. While there were exceptions among muggleborns like Lily Evans whose affinity to charms had been greater than that of Filius Flitwick, over seventy five percent of muggleborns did not have specific gifts towards any branch of magic.

Most had an average affinity to all branches. This was one of the main reasons why many of them were not chosen for a job even when they scored better marks than the purebloods. It was not just because they were muggleborn.

But a study of the descendants of muggleborns who married into magical families showed that they had developed the affinities specific to that family within four to five generations.

This changed the direction of research to the source of magic in a magical beings body. There were many important questions. While the theorists continued their work, experiments were conducted on magical and mundane animals of all types, muggles, squibs, dementor victims and criminal muggleborns sentenced to life in Azkaban or the kiss.

Over time, the experiments which initially killed over sixty five percent of the subjects were refined. They were finally brought to a stage where they could finally experiment with only minor discomfort on purebloods. The tests on Purebloods were necessary to obtain information on the affinities.

The Department of Mysteries was by now involved in the research. Old Jack Corvin had used his considerable influence there to get them to cooperate. Their involvement was to be classified for the next seventy years. They provided the test subjects from prisons and the experimental facilities built by them over the last three hundred and fifty years were put at Lady Black and her group's disposal.

The major breakthrough was unfortunately not obtained for the next nineteen years. Her employees had included everyone from the most brilliant theorists of Europe to Hogwarts students who showed promise as theorists regardless of blood, birth or magical power. Walburga thought that she might as well as make use of the muggleborns minds if they were good enough.

The more gruesome experiments were conducted by fanatics who hated muggleborns. They were taken as long as they could follow instructions and complete the experiments. They had an outlet to their frustration in the form of conducting experiments that caused great pain on the subjects they could get.

Then came the silent revolution. With the help of Walburga's son, Sirius Black, a brilliant mind himself, who copied the entire research done till then, provided and helped with the material, Lily Evans, by then Lily Potter, a magical prodigy and genius, cracked the theory and obtained the answer at the age of twenty two.

She had combined the solutions to various theoretical problems into one detailed and complete proof. The experimental proof completely supported the theory. It took Lily and Sirius a total of seven years to complete the work. They studied the old and new theories for around three years to gain a proper understanding of what they were trying to accomplish.

Sirius had long had problems with the prejudice that the purebloods had. He was of the opinion that muggleborns had to be introduced and trained much earlier into the magical way of life. With witches like Lily coming from the muggles, he believed that most muggleborn would be as good as purebloods given the right training.

He knew of his mothers endeavor to discover the mysteries of magic. He started studying the theories in secret at the age of thirteen. He had been bored and was in his parent's room in an attempt to put some itching powder in his father's boots when he spotted his mothers journal.

With the same curiosity that led to his and his best friend's discovery of Remus Lupin's lycanthropy he opened the journal and found the opening discoveries of the research. On a whim, he copied the journal with a spell. As punishment for his prank, he ended up being locked in his room for next few days with the instruction to study.

In an effort to prevent boredom, he spent this time trying to unravel the work he had stolen from his mother. The challenge of learning something new and interesting spurred him on the first few days. He found that he had inherited his mothers capacity to understand the deep theories of magic.

Over the next two years he spent the time he was supposed to be studying for his classes in understanding the basics of the work his mother's journal provided. He had started it in an effort to surprise his mother with his knowledge and gain her appreciation.

At fifteen he learned of the experiments that were being carried out. At sixteen, he started copying the research and taking Lily's help in understanding it. During the Hogwarts break that year, his mother had gone to Scandinavia to discuss the work with some theorists there. It was also where some of the experiments were being carried out.

Sirius came home and copied the many documents of data that chronicled the confirmed discoveries of the research and the incomplete theories that had been formulated. It took him over a month to magically copy all the material without leaving any trace behind.

By then his support of the muggleborns and his lack of deference to many age old customs that he believed were antiquated had started the deterioration of his relation with his family. His complete lack of respect to the ideals of the Dark Lord who was just emerging in those days, refusal to accept a wedding contract with a pureblood witch from the eight hundred year old Accalia family had strained the relation to the breaking point.

The kicker was when he got into a duel with the Nott patriarch during a formal gathering because he said that all muggleborns should be killed. He had knocked out the man in a duel lasting a few seconds.

To add insult to injury, he informed the assembly that the patriarch of the Noble, ancient and pureblood family had been defeated by the use of curses and hexes invented by Lily Evans, a muggleborn.

As far as Arcturus Black, his father was concerned, this action was the last straw. Sirius Black was soon disinherited and his younger brother Regulus named the heir to the Black family.

Sirius stayed with the Potters for the next three years until one of his uncles left him enough money to buy a small house and complete training as a warder. He spent a significant amount of his free time working with Lily on completing the theory.

Arcturus Black had died two years after his disinheritance. Having rebuffed all attempts by his mother at reconciliation during the following year and a half, Sirius showed up all of a sudden one day in the Black estate with the completed theoretical framework and the corresponding experimental proof of the new, revised and completed theory of magic by Lily Potter nee Evans.

It nearly caused a heart attack in his mother and she attacked and almost killed him when she found out that he had stolen and provided the data to a muggleborn. After getting defeated and restrained by Sirius, she calmed down. She set about to disprove the theory. The effort failed miserably.

The completed theory was beautiful.

The experimental research work showed her that magical beings were just a small subset of the general human population. The study showed that in an evolutionary system the capacity to channel magic was a benefit.

A small part of the study involved the search and study of sites which showed evidence of human settlement during the early centuries of human civilization. It showed why wizards were not the predominant part of the human population in spite of having the evolutionary benefit. Most of the skeletons which showed evidence of being that of magical humans did not appear to have died of natural causes and were mostly found buried some distance from non magical skeletons.

There were clear indications of them having been killed violently in the bones. It seemed that at least one thing was common among early and present humans, the drive to ridicule and destroy that which was different.

Muggles had always been more numerous than wizards. This indicated that the complete secrecy of the wizarding community was vital to long term survival. That is, unless they already had the magical methods or developed such capabilities enough to skew the chances of victory in an all out battle in the magical populations favor.

There was one relief to her. While the mental and physical capacities of magical and non-magical humans were the same for untrained people, magicals had the potential to improve mental capacity by at least thirteen percent at most permanently. Physical capacity could be improved by an order of magnitude more than that of non magicals for short intervals.

Once trained, magicals had the potential to be the superior ones amongst humans _on average_. But non magicals were too far to reach in terms of population.

The research provided an answer to some of the oldest questions asked by people. Some of them were that of the origin of the soul, its description, its relation to the capacity to channel magic, the presence of muggleborns, squibs, etc.

(**AN: The next bit is a bit dry… Bear with me**)

The soul was actually found to be the essence of every living being. It is also what channels energy that can be used as magic. Therefore every living being is capable of containing magic due to its soul, but not to channel it. Channeling magic to the outside of the body requires more than just the capacity to store magic.

The necessary and sufficient condition for a system, i.e. a group of molecules that form a living being to contain a soul is the capacity to replicate.

The origin of the soul is still a hotly debated subject in academic circles. But the moment that a system obtains the capacity to replicate or reproduce without any outside assistance, it acquires an entity or a spark that can be called a soul.

It was theorized that a few billion years ago when life started evolving from single celled to multicelled organisms, the soul too evolved. From being unique to each living system, connections between the sparks started forming to those in neighboring cells.

Eventually they form one entity. It has been found that in higher level of living systems, the sparks of every cell in a body is interconnected to each and every other cell in the body by an essence that makes it unique. This interconnected essence forms the complete soul of a person.

The highest concentration of the connections is at the region where the heart is located. This region is called the magical core and accounts for sixty five percent of magical energy generation by a body. The dynamics governing the generation, storage and discharge of energy by the soul is not a simple algebraic function.

It is highly complicated and complete understanding will probably take many more years of work. The network of connections gives the capacity to channel magic from the core to other regions in the body.

As mentioned earlier, the presence of part of the soul in every cell of the body is why substances like blood and other tissue can be used in magics in connection to the individual from whom is came.

Once removed from a being, any tissue will within 24 hours loose connection to the soul even if kept alive by artificial means. During this period, it can be used to perform magics that can, if powerful enough affect the source of the tissue.

But even if the connection is lost in around a day, the soul's echo remains. If the tissue is kept under stasis it can still be used with sufficient power for minor magics.

Blood is a substance that is not stationary in a body. As such the connections between the cells present in it and the core are not only much more flexible and diverse but stronger. Even once removed from the body, the connections being stronger than for other tissue persist for the longest time making it the most useful item in long range casting on its source.

Every living organism on earth consists of genetic material. What muggle scientists have not been able to identify and that the magical ones have very recently is the presence of a magical analogue to genetic material. This is more of the root for the connections.

As in chromosomes, they occur in pairs in all higher living organisms. The system is different in lower organisms. The laws governing the transfer of magical genetic information are exactly same as those followed by organic genetic material as is made obvious by the information given below.

There are two varieties and have been designated M1 and M2 and are commonly called the soul genes. Any combination of these pairs, i.e.  
M1M1  
M1M2  
M2M1  
M2M2  
in a cell can provide an anchor to the soul. Most **non-magicals** have a pair of the M2 soul gene. Around three percent of the non magical human population contains the pair M1M2. A child of two such parents has a twenty five percent chance of having the capacity to channel magic.

The occurrence of a pair of the M1 gene allows not just the anchor to the soul, but also the ability to channel magic through the soul to the outside of the body. There are two varieties of the M1 gene.  
M1a  
M1b.  
The individuals having a pair of M1a genes or a pair contain one M1a and one M1b are what we call witches and wizards.

Around 1.5 percent of the magical human population contains at least one copy of the M1b gene. It appears to be a mutation of the M1a. Both provide specific traits. An individual with two copies of the M1b has a highly limited capacity to channel magic through the body to the outside.

These children are called squibs. It has been noticed that the complete magical energy that a squib generates is used by the body to improve itself. As such they are highly healthy individuals and remain so most of their lives.

They are immune to most magical and muggle diseases and have an average lifetime that is five percent greater than of witches and wizards. This immunity and longevity made wizards and witches previously believe that the squibs were stealing the magics from others. That's a small part of the reason for them being hated.

Witches and wizards also do utilize magic to improve their body unconsciously. But it is on a lower scale compared to that of squibs. Magical beings usually have a lifetime that is on average twenty percent longer than that of non magical beings. Individuals with M1a and M1b are found to be in the lower range of magical power.

The Magical channeling capacity of any being depends on the interconnections between the soul anchors in each cell occurs in a body. It has been found that while some might have wider conduits other individuals have more streamlined connections. They have finer control of the magics they cast.

Those having wider conduits have a larger absorption and emission capacity. While these people can cast more powerful magics they might never have the fineness that someone with more streamlined channels can.

While there were simple explanations to many questions that could be given to the common wizard and witch, understanding the theory's mathematical framework and its actual consequences would give one the capacity to perform intricate magics that would be beyond the scope of those who had not yet understand it.

A good analogy would be the follows. A muggle who only knows that an electrical appliance runs on electricity without understanding how exactly the appliance or electricity works cannot fix a faulty one even if given all the required tools. A trained technician understanding the basics behind them can.

She still suffered from shock. Having to discard centuries of beliefs in favor of facts that demolished some of her staunchest beliefs was terribly hard. She contacted a very serious case of dragon pox a month after reading the summary of the research and died around three months later.

Realizing her impending death, she prepared all the paperwork required to reinstate her eldest son as the heir to the Black legacy. This fact was known only to the goblin in charge of the Black accounts. It was sworn to keep it a secret under pain of death by Sirius. Her death lead Sirius to order the termination of funding and hence the termination of most of the still ongoing research.

The completed research was to be released to the public only by the determination of the head of the house of Black. The contract the researchers signed made sure of their silence. A major settlement was provided as compensation to each of them. It removed fifty seven percent of the Black fortune.

The other sponsors of the project were informed that it was taking too much time, resources and effort to continue. They got the data that was collected till then and told to formulate the theory on their own if they still wanted to.

Lily, James and Sirius under the guidance of a changed Walburga Black till her death and on their own later, set about in secrecy using the new theory and performing experiments that allowed them feats of magic that would have awed Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort. On occasions they used snippets of this new understanding of magic in their fight against the Dark Lord that did just that.

It cemented their status as the brightest and greatest wizards and witch of their generation. It also led to the Dark Lord targeting them for recruitment. Their refusal to join his cause led him to actively hunt them as a threat.

Their refusal was not truly on an ideological note. They had refused to bow down to Albus Dumbledore for years now and they respected him as one of the most learned and greatest wizards alive.

They had refused to share the secrets of their feats with him for the time being. They would also definitely not bow down to any other living human, especially one like the Dark Lord who branded his followers and expected them to kiss his feet.

One year following the death of Walburga, using the side notes she wrote during her illness on improvement of future generations of magical children and the confidence in their magical skill which was acquired during their testing of the complete theory, Sirius Black, Lily and James Potter together completed a series of twenty one rituals spaced over the duration of a year that would allow Lily to birth to a child whose Magical Channeling Capacity and control would be at the least as good as that of the best living now

One fact that was kept a complete secret amongst the three of them was that Lily Evans had the love of both the men. While James publicly claimed his love for Lily, Sirius never did. Even Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew never knew.

Sirius Black had never stopped trying to win her over until the day they got married. He never hid this fact from James. The fact that is even stranger is that in the end Lily accepted both of them. She would eventually marry James with Sirius being their best man.

James and Sirius were as close as brothers. Even the quest for Lily did not break them apart. The dynamics were sometimes strained. But it held together until the death of James and Lily. Even after marriage, they were rarely seen apart.

While Sirius did love Lily, he was by nature a playboy, and to keep himself sane he frequently went out on dates with other women. He was already famous for his charm, wit, magical powers, being the bad boy in the Black family and his success as one of the brightest and best warder in the British Islands. He never had a problem in finding interesting and beautiful women to spend time with.

When Sirius heard that James and Lily were trying for a child, he convinced them to experiment on themselves so that they could create a child together. He was unwilling to have children with any other women. After very serious consideration James and Lily accepted the idea. Lily loved both of the men. She was willing to take the chance to have a child that would be the heir to both the Potter and Black legacies.

Unknown to most people, Lily, James and Sirius were not the type to follow the established trends. They did what they saw fit. They were in reality, not as the picture of kind hearted and law abiding individuals that most people painted them to be.

Sirius was a product of the Black family. They regularly taught their children magics that had been outlawed hundreds of years ago. He was brought up with the idea that the strongest survived and the weak perished.

James, a child of the Potters, was taught from an early age to think independently and to bow to no one. He was an equal to the scion of the Black's.

They had befriended a werewolf because it would be thrilling. They had become animagi to run with it on full moons.

Lily was an ambitious and courageous woman. She knew that in this world to win you had to take what you wanted. She was ready to perform experiments that were most likely to be illegal in every civilized country in the world (that is if they ever found out about the experiments).

The three of them were ready to use a theory for which the data was obtained by the experimentation and death of many live humans and animals. They valued safety enough to hide their location inside a human soul. They willingly experimented with unknown magics on their own bodies and souls. They were willing to take calculated risks as long as they personally hurt no one else. They had happily dabbled in the farthest reaches of magic they could find.

They decided to use their knowledge such that the child would have all the best genetic qualities they had in themselves and more. To make their child better they secretly obtained samples of blood from seven families with the strongest and most useful affinities in Europe and performed the equivalent of splicing the regions of the magical genes that carried those specific abilities together.

Many abilities were not compatible with each other. They had to calculate very carefully the chances of a healthy child. They achieved partial success twice. Lily miscarried both times. The trauma of loosing the children almost proved too much for her to continue. On what would have been their last attempt, after very, very careful trials, they created one last embryo with the greatest possible care. The experiment succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The child would mostly have the magical signature of a Potter. The Potter signature would hide the fact that the powerful magic of the Black family also flowed through the child. The child would grow up to become one of the most legendary figures in magic in the future. The very, very careful series of tests they conducted on their child showed it to have the potential to control magic with a fineness that was unheard of.

That child was me.

My full and true name is Harry James Sirius Potter and this will be the story detailing my discovery of the theory of magic.

**Author Note:  
**_Hope to have many readers to this story. This will be a novel length fic. Please read and review. Constructive criticism highly appreciated._

_The second chapter is also going to be a lot of theory. In the third chapter, Harry's childhood with the Dursley's and his initial discoveries of magic and his documentation of its properties will be described._

**The real fun begins after that.**


	2. Chapter 2: Genesis

**Author note:**  
I was told the first chapter was like a textbook chapter. I agree. That's how this chapter will also be. Sorry about that. From the next chapter the actual story starts. Just giving some background.

Enjoy this chapter my dear readers. Any suggestions on ideas you need explained, please let me know. I will try to include them in the forthcoming chapters if I can.

**Chapter 2: Genesis**

Genesis: The coming into being. I gotta tell you... my coming into being in this world was in no ways normal. Nor am I. I was different. That is what made me special. Abnormal, freak, unholy, a being that should not exist. These were some of the many kinder descriptions that were made of me.

As mentioned earlier, Lily, James and Sirius decided to make me such that I had all the best qualities they had. It was not a small effort. I was to be the heir to two of the very powerful pureblood families. It was an action that they knew would create a major controversy in the future if the truth was ever found out. The idea had tremendous potential for misuse. Hell... they misused it themselves. They stole genetic material from others with abilities they saw was useful. The truth could never come out.

The wards Sirius set up were powerful enough to completely mask and disperse the stray magics leaking from their experiments. The protocols they set up left only the minimum possible residues behind. Their Notes were destroyed as soon as their usefulness was over. They committed to memory most of their work.

From the completed theory and experiments they knew the presence of the magical analogues of genes. They first tested themselves and found that both James and Sirius had a pair of the M1a versions each, whereas Lily had the pair M1aM1b. Unlike the presence of the X and Y chromosomes in the non magical genes, the magical genes have no separate male and female versions.

The magical community had paid less attention to the biological genetic material. Their interests had always been onto the understanding of the rules governing the inheritance of magical capabilities. While most in the medical community understood the significance of DNA and its role in the transference of characters to the progeny (_The occurrence of genetic defects and curiosity of some healers necessitated the importing of the data from the muggle world_) they did not have a very good understanding of the transfer of the magical genes. Sufficient data had been collected, but an in depth study had not been performed in a scientific manner. A lot of research was funded by purebloods and had only focused on proving pureblood supremacy.

My parents (James, Lily and Sirius) understanding of the M genes was very advanced for their time. Lily had to study a lot about the techniques used by healers to understand the experimental evidence. Also being a muggleborn, she knew a decent amount of knowledge about DNA and other genetic material. Her knowledge of biological genetic material was sufficient that with enough will, they could also use the best biological traits of all three of them. This splicing would probably not (and did not) work as well as that of the magical genes.

Combining all this knowledge the three of them initially experimented on magical rats. They tried and succeeded in combining magical traits of two male and one female rat in a litter borne by the female. Only after this success did they proceed in applying the theory on themselves.

About the affinities... Just like we have some races which have specific traits, magical traits also exits. And these too are transferred to children. However the likelihood of the children displaying the same magical traits as the parents with very similar strengths in the specific field is much higher in magicals than compared to that from DNA. There are hundreds of affinities that have been cataloged. While transfiguration, charms, potions, defensive/offensive magics, affinity to magical creatures, and divination are those that all have to a reasonable degree, there are more exotic types. Most affinities are highly specific combination's of the above mentioned broad classifications. There are some affinities that are characteristic of specific communities.

The basic affinities allow certain specific types of manipulation.

**Transfiguration** (_Changes one material to another or builds a lattice of matter held together with magic_)  
**Charms**(_A wide array of spells that allow one to change or imbue a material with a specific property_)  
**Potions**(_The ability to link different magics in a medium into a network that allows the medium to perform a specific task. Its not simple chemistry type cooking on a flame_)  
**Defensive/Offensive magics**(_the ability to block magics or bypass magics forcefully_)**  
Magical creature affinity**(_The ability to interact with magical creatures. Parseltongue is the strongest known form. But its highly specific_)**  
Divination**(_The ability to sense very faint magics and form a picture that is useful_)

Some of the more interesting affinities are affinities to  
**Fire spells** (_Transfiguration to create the fuel and charms to light it_)  
**Flight spells**(_subclass of levitation in charms_)  
**Shields**(_defensive magics, very necessary for warders_)  
**Shield piercers**(_definitely offensive magics_)  
**Compulsion magics**(_more of mind magics, but very much charms related_)  
**Ritual magics** (_Mostly a combination charms, potions defensive/offensive magics_)  
**Dark arts** (_Offensive and charms. It relates to magics that can be designed specifically to forcibly gain something from someone_)  
**Metal magics** (_Transfiguration to mold the metal and charms to enchant it_)  
**Wand crafting** (_Magical creature affinity and divination. Or else how the hell do you expect a wand crafter to have a wand tailored to everyone?_)  
**Live transfiguration** (_Transfiguration obviously and charms to subvert the live creatures natural resistance to magics_)  
**Sentience magics** ( _Magical creature affinities, charms. Fiendfyre is an example of this fire. Its vaguely sentient and absorbs ambient magic to power itself_)

The list is practically endless... The ratios of the basic affinities decide what sort of secondary affinity the person has. As people usually have a fixed ratio of the basic affinities, most people can usually only have one strong secondary affinity and weaker affinity to another affinity which requires around the same ratio as what is already present.  
Between the three of them, they already had very strong charms, dark arts and transfiguration affinities and from Lily a slightly above average potions affinity. James who had studied the theories after their completion paved the way to have many different affinities in one person with a radical idea. It required a lot of fine tuning. Especially as the first two pregnancies failed due to the volatility of the ability to fluctuate the basic affinities.

They designed the first seven rituals such that the child formed would have the pair of M1a genes with one of them having the capacity to harbor the strong affinities. The second M1a was to have the capacity to fluctuate in the affinities. Remember that a complete soul is one which has a pair of networks. The fluctuating capability caused the anchors also to fluctuate. This caused the soul to break off the anchor. This resulted in the child dying. In the language of mathematics it could be said that the system(in this case the child's magics) would be in a region of unstable equilibrium. Consider a ball just balanced on the tip of a vertically standing pole. A slight perturbation is sufficient to tip it across. The fluctuations provided these perturbations and the soul broke.

The second set of eleven rituals incorporated the fluctuations in both the genes. This simultaneous and equal fluctuation was in a region of a curve that could be called a local minimum. Consider a zigzagging horizontal curve that denotes energy. The most stable region for any system is where the energy is minimum. i.e. where the curve is lowest. They had calculated that this was a region not the lowest, but a dip in the curve closest to the minimum energy possible.

They had calculated that this configuration was for some reason more stable than the earlier version. It was so. But an unborn child or a very young child does not have much control over the magics it wields. There will be spikes in the magic produced. The fluctuations while stable enough for the embryo's soul, caused a tremendous amount of magical energy spikes. The mother is protected by the magical shield that the placenta generates. The child could have survived if these spikes could have been discharged completely. But the placental shield did not allow the needed rate of discharge. Lily's own body fought against the fluctuations. The shields increased in strength. More energy in a body means that temperature increased. The strain increased to a very high point till Lily was struck down by a high fever for five days. She nearly lost her own life. She was two months into the pregnancy when the strain was finally too much for her system. It caused a rejection of the anomaly and she miscarried.

After her recovery James proposed his radical idea. Use a bypass. Let the pair of M1a's remain with the strongest possible affinities for all the basic affinities they could carry. There is no need for them to fluctuate. The problem of fluctuations to the soul anchors will never arise. The child would register as normal to any test of magical signatures that is used now. Then incorporate another magical gene into the child. An M1b. It would use all the remaining magics into making the child's body healthy. It would be designed such that the soul anchor was suppressed. Just a network of very weak connections. No extra soul piece. The gene would also be modified such that it was bridged onto the pair of M1a's, channeling the required level of magics of each affinity.

One M1a carrying the Potter magics, another carrying the Black Magics. Lily's affinity from her own M1a split between those from James and Sirius and her M1b with the capability to fluctuate the basic affinities to any possible levels. The M1a's capable of channeling the sum of these combination's to the outside when necessary.

It was a phenomenal and completely crazy idea. BUT IT WORKED. Calculations showed that all the magical energies could be channeled, minimum energy levels could be maintained when necessary, allow great regenerative capacity, the M1b could use any spike in energy to improve the body to the best of its capacity due to which it would facilitate a longer and healthier life. The extra gene's capacity to fluctuate to any desired value meant that it would provide a level of fineness and control of magic that could equal Dumbledore's and Voldemort's without the need for over fifty years of experience. It was brilliant, absolutely insane but brilliant.

They went ahead with the idea. The rituals the conducted earlier had taken care of most of the groundwork. A set of three rituals involving the three of them completed the preparations. Lily Potter was pregnant with a child that had the potential to become one of the most versatile and powerful mage ever born.

For the actual rituals they needed a place that was nearly unknown to most people, far enough from most ministry monitored sensors so that any stray magics escaping the wards set up by Sirius were undetected, or too weak by the time they reached any device. The Potter and Black ancestral homes had wards that were strong enough to repel most attackers from breaching through. Well, they were actually strong enough that they would unconsciously divert away any and all but the strongest occlumens. It was standard practice followed by most pureblood families with enough money. But these homes were all registered in the ministry and they had an emergency bypass that allowed them to the edge of the wards in case of an emergency. The misuse of these emergency bypass was very strictly monitored, but it was still an unacceptable risk when one was playing without a permit with experimental blood and soul magics. That would get you sent to azkaban for a minimum of forty five years.

So they found a house in a remote region of west country that was close to Godrics Hollow. In the house they built a blood and password activated portkey that was specific to the three of them alone that took you to a region nearby. From there they had to walk a few minutes to reach a new network of caves that they had carved out in the mountains nearby. They heavily warded it and proceeded with the experiments. On their success they closed off their "lab" completely with a blood and magic keyed ward. They wanted the residual magics would slowly dissipate leaving nothing leading back to them.

The pregnancy was quite nerve wracking all the three. It went beautifully. The child developed normally, all scans showed that the embryo had no deformities and there were the minimum possible magical fluctuations that is possible in a magical pregnancy. The scans also showed that the child had the strong Potter magics. It completely covered both the Black and Evans magics as should be. A specific sequence of tests with the proper spell signature(that was only known to Lily, James and Sirius) would shift aside the Potter signature and allow the Black and Evans magics to shine through. They had planned to train me in the signature spell that would allow him to utilize the fluctuation property he had when he showed enough competence in magic. They expected it to be around the age of thirteen.

And so around nine months of pregnancy I was born... yeah... party... The compulsory magical scan on children born in wizarding hospitals recorded one Harry James Potter in the ministry and Hogwarts archive the results my parents expected. My true and complete magical signature would never be known to anyone else. Even Albus Dumbledore never found out though he suspected that I was not normal. My grand parents saw me only one before they mysteriously disappeared a month later.

The specialty in me was probably what made me a candidate for that damned prophecy. Voldemort would not have attacked the Longbottom's. He would have used some divination technique to find out who the real threat was and me being me would have registered as the one with the probability of causing the greatest havoc. So it was not all fun and games in my life. Difficulties arose that had to be faced all the time. I did face them and survive.

The moment my parents heard the prophecy from Dumbledore, they realized that there was only one truly possible candidate. Me. I was special, unique and one with the possibility of having many powers the Dark Lord knows not. They searched for a possible method to hide and finally found out about the fidelius charm. It was a highly complex piece of magic requiring much more than above average power, an in depth understanding of wards, charms and at least an intuitive understanding of the soul. Only Dumbledore had all the requirements even though my parents had a better understanding of the dynamics of a soul. Frank and Alice Longbottom chose the safety of the ancestral manor. They felt that it was enough. It lead to a disaster in the future.

My parents and Dumbledore decided that the small house in Godrics hollow was great for the purpose of the fidelius. While a house was registered in James and Lily's name in the village, we actually stayed in the house that had the portkey to the lab. The house in the village had some very strong wards put on it. But there is no unbreakable ward.

The fidelius causes the ones who know the space to forget it. The more the number of people who knew the place, more the magic that is needed to hide the place is. There is a finite amount of energy that can be put into a spell before it becomes unstable. The casting of the fidelius itself requires enormous magical potential. So very few people had to know the actual region where the house was present. The fidelius charm wraps space itself into a circle around a small region and thus allows the complete and total hiding of the space. The metaphorical sticking of the space into place is done by the secret keeper.

He/she is the loophole into the secret or a way to break a fidelius. Sirius Black was initially used as a Secret keeper. The secret was known by Dumbledore, one house-elf Tabby and Pettigrew in case of emergencies. But a secret keeper cannot stay inside a secret for over two hours. Its just not possible. The magics composing the spell would either forcefully push the secret keeper out or collapse violently. Whenever they wanted to meet they had to use an alternative method of communication or James and Lily had to get them and me out of the house into the one in the others wanted to meet the Potters, they were informed by Dumbledore and then came to the house in the village. The separation from his son proved too much of a strain for Sirius. Also he was the obvious choice for a spell dependent on total trust as far as the Potters were concerned.

So they changed the secret keeper to Peter Pettigrew and provided him with a proper place to hide. Sirius appeared in random places all over Britan and twice in France to give an appearance of him evading the Death Eaters. What a mistake it turned out to be. I will explain the reasons for their trust in him and not Remus Lupin sometime later. Peter was not actually too bad a person.

Though I do not remember my time with them, it was probably the only truly happy, carefree times I experienced in the first twenty years of my life. It was coming to an end.

On a fateful Halloween night over a year after my birth having finally found the secret from Peter, the Dark Lord Voldemort attacked my parents and me. He had found out the secret a week ago and planned well for a proper win. He had his Death Eaters lay ward stones all around the village for certain wards that only he could activate. Having fought the Potters and Black thrice and knowing their nearly unbelievable command of magic, he ordered Peter to visit them the day before and slip into their drinks a very potent but nearly untraceable depressant that would be activated only by his magics. Severus Snape unknowingly did get his revenge on James Potter. He also ordered Peter to give Sirius a strong hallucinogen the day before Halloween. Lily had luckily stopped drinking alcohol a week ago and Peter was not aware of this fact. On the day before the attack Peter snuck out of his hiding place after coating the entire place with a potent hallucinogen. He went with the Lord Voldemort and waited outside the house.

The Potters realized his presence and fled to the house in Godrics Hollow. An anti - apparition and anti- portkey ward had been laid. Else they might have portkeyed to their this time, in London, Sirius Blacks moderate divination skills kicked in and feeling something wrong, he first came to find Peter. On entering the hideout, he noticed no sign of struggle. But Peter was missing. He unfortunately inhaled a moderate amount of the hallucinogen dispersed in the air and was unable to think rationally for the next twenty four hours. He was initially in too much of a panicked state to notice the initial effects and would not realize what happened for the next two days.

In a heavily warded house in Godrics Hollow the most famous wizarding phenomena of this century was about to occur.

On reaching No. 12 Godrics Hollow, they found that the entire village had been covered in anti transport wards. They could not run far. The effects of the potion were visible in James. But he asked her to run and that he would hold the Dark Lord Back. Lily ran upstairs with the child when Voldemort broke into the house and started fighting James.

A desperate plan formed in her mind. A magical protection that Walburga Black had theorized a month before her death that used the human soul of a close relative as a shield came to her. She had studied it a month back and remembered it well. In an act of desperation she focused on the theory and with the intent of a mother willing to die protecting her child to call on to her magics, she drew the necessary runes as she remembered on herself and me with her wand. The runes would channel the magics in the desired fashion. It took her less than two minutes of feverish work to pull off the greatest magical achievement in a hundred years. My mother was truly a brilliant woman. I would definitely miss her touch even if I never would remember it in the future.

My dad died soon enough to a killing curse as my memories in the presence of dementors would show years later. He probably gave very little fight. The depressant Peter used would have sucked out all the confidence and with it the knowledge that could have provided one of the greatest magical duels of this century. A fight between Lord Voldemort and Lord Potter, two magical giants in their own right. One with a nearly unrivaled fineness in magic and another with the new understanding of magic that would have allowed him feats never before seen. But it was not to be. Lord Voldemort beat him with cunning. It was a tribute to James Potter's magical skill that the Dark Lord did not want to face him head on.

Lord Voldemort headed upstairs where he knew Lily Potter would be. He had not detected the depressant in her. It was not a problem. Having a child to protect would mean she would be in no position to truly engage him. But he was still a man of his word. He would give her a chance to step aside as he had informed Snape, in return for providing the extremely tricky and dangerous to create magic activated potion he had got Peter to use on the Potters.

On reaching upstairs, he found mum facing him without a wand, me sitting behind her on the floor, crying. When she refused to move aside, he killed her and sealed our fates. He turned his wand at me and fired off the dreaded killing curse. It hit me and was absorbed by me. Then to his shock, a killing curse came from me... and the rest is history as they say. Peter pettigrew transformed and ran the moment he realized what was wrong.

A lot of people including the famed unspeakable's wonder how I survived. It was pure chance, my unique magical genetics, my mothers sacrifice and Lord Voldemort's soul fragment together. No... Not Lily's love alone. That was Dumbledore's explanation in an effort to stop any true experimentation on me by others into the true cause and his quest to make sure I was as normal and as average as humanely possible. He also tried to mold me to be ready to sacrifice myself for others.

To understand what truly happened to me one has to understand the concept behind the killing curse and a Horcrux.

The killing curse is one of the most powerful curses available, capable of passing through any and all shields because of one simple reason. It is not technically a curse, in other words it's not a piece of regular magic. It is in very simple terms, a piece of the soul of the caster, typically averaging about seven percent of the original. No magical shield is designed to stop a fragment of soul. The soul is the conduit for magic. The killing curse striking at any living being, on any part of the body will simply rip out that soul.

The killing curse being a part of ones soul network that is ripped out and cast into another being, operates by severing all connections of the recipient's soul to the body in an attempt to fix itself to that body. The time taken for this has been measured to be in the range of a few microseconds. Once all connections are severed, the network quickly starts to disintegrate leaving behind only a faint echo of itself in the magics of the surrounding atmosphere.

The soul fragment comprising the killing curse, after attempting to affix itself to the body and completely failing to do so due to the incompatibility of the body will return to the caster and start reintegrating itself slowly. The killing curse is a very short range curse. It will not travel beyond a distance of a hundred and fifty meters before the soul fragment is pulled back.

A killing curse that does connect and kill a person will, during the attempt to connect itself to the body of the cursed, achieve an intimate understanding of that soul's connection. This memory is not held on by the soul fragment. It on returning to the source through the wand that cast it will deposit the memory in the wand of the caster. This memory can be called back by using the reverse spell effect. In an attempt to recreate the echo of the magic previously cast, it uses the memory of the soul to attempt a reconstruction of the connections solely composed of magic.

Once the connection to the body is broken, the soul disintegrates almost completely. This is the sole reason why a person once dead cannot be brought to life. The echo of a once complete soul is what necromancers try to call back and is less than a ghost which is a conscious imprint that the soul creates before disintegrating in an attempt to hold on to life. A ghost contains all the memories of the soul and part of the original being.

The resurrection stone, one of the famed deathly hallows is the greatest creation of any necromancer. Using the wearer's ties to that person, it calls to this echo. The echo is NOT the exact soul of the person called back. It varies depending on the caller's connection to the dead person. This is the reason why calling back a soul by necromancy to prove the innocence or guilt of a person accused of murder is not a valid legal option. The echo's response will most likely vary depending on its caller.

Breaking up a soul to power the killing curse is no simple task. To do so requires an intimate understanding of the soul or a very powerful emotive force. In simpler terms, emotion strong enough to overcome and rip apart a piece of the very fabric of ones being. True hate of another is the only emotion that one can harness in an effort to do such a deed.

Once cast out, the piece of soul will immediately return to the caster. This ripping of the soul is what causes nausea, fatigue and the feeling of loss that every first time user of the kiliing curse experiences. It has been well documented that they feel they have changed something that made them what they are.

This feeling of change will persist for varying lengths of time depending on the person. The soul, given a sufficiently long enough time, anything varying from two to five years starting immediately from the moment of return, will reintegrate with the rest of it.

This variation in time is due to the individual's acceptance of the deed. Someone who feels repulsed by his actions will take longer to accept back the fragment. But repeated use of the killing curse before this recuperating duration will cast out this same piece. In this case repenting the crime is not the way to heal. One needs to accept what was done.

This is the reason why the avada kedavra becomes easier with repeated casting. Research has shown that after casting the curse more than seven times within one year, the fragment takes an exponential increase in time to reintegrate. In other words, it's easier to cast again.

Of course there are methods available to truly skilled wizards to destroy a soul in ways that even the echo is completely dismantled and disintegrated to pure magic leaving behind in this world no evidence of the existence of that person. To an ordinary wizard the killing curse is the surest way to end a life with no possibility of recovery.

The Killing curse being a part of the castes soul has been theorized before. With no method to prove it these theories were mostly forgotten. But there have been some who realized the potential of this information. In the approximately 15 seconds that the fragment would survive before completely loosing connection to the main piece, one could use a well prepared container to store it creating what has come to be called, a horcrux.

As the connection between the Horcrux and the original piece still persists, even if the body is destroyed the soul is capable of retaining its existence without the possibility of naturally disintegrating. This wraith like being that it will become will probably be in agony most of the time. Consider its situation. No true sensory input at all. No sight, hearing, smell or touch to inform it of what is going on around it. But a soul absorbs magic and everything around it will be emitting magic. It is most probably possible for it to use these magics as a sort of RADAR and feel its way around. The condition this soul must remain is probably worse than that of a person who is conscious but unable to fell anything. Such a torturous existence must be unfathomably horrid. But there is still one very important fact. This fragment is still alive. That is the trade.

What of the vacuum created in the original? It cannot remain. The echo of the soul once there will try to fill itself somehow. This will be filled by the energy that is completely comprised of magic. The capacity of the individual, whose soul is missing a piece, to channel magic thus increases. The more pieces cut out the more the metaphysical area for contact with magic increases. A simpler way to understand this process can be got by imagining a solid sphere. It has a specific surface are. Now slice it by half and separate the pieces by some distance. The cut area is exposed. This implies an extra surface area equal to the areas of the two cut sides.

The optimum number of pieces that can be removed from the soul is six. Once the first seven percent is removed, ninety three percent remains. The next soul fragment would contain only six point five one of the original. In this way removing six fragments would remove 35.5 percent of the original leaving 64.5 percent intact. According to magical theorists this would mean an increase of Magical Channeling Capacity (MCC) by nearly 49 percent. The MCC of the strongest to the weakest magic user does not vary more than 21 percent. If a person in the upper range creates six horcruxes he would most definitely be magically stronger by half than the average magical Joe.

By the time Lord Voldemort had cast the killing curse on me Lily's soul had unraveled completely. She destroyed her very essence in an attempt to save me. Just this by itself would not have stopped the killing curse if I had been a normal child. The changes they made in me were the true cause. This mangled protection had then, following the paths set by the runes begun integrating as much as possible into the regions of the two M1a's that had her signatures and also with the M1b. It was a very weak integration. The soul fragment in the Dark Lord's curse had already begun ripping out my soul when the protection completely activated. Except for a few minor connections that remained to the bigger piece, this fragment of mine had no anchors. It sought to protect itself and the only way that it could was to take out the source of its pain. It did. This piece of me that was ripped out got loose and that my friends, is what destroyed the Dark Lord. I am the youngest ever to successfully cast the killing curse.

Now lets slow down time and see what exactly occurred during this time. During the milliseconds in which my own unintentional killing curse was ripping out the dark lord soul form his body, changes were occurring at a very fast pace in me. My M1b had the capacity to adapt. My mother's protection slowed down the killing curse which gave my M1b enough time to sample it and adapt sufficiently to it. The dark lords soul fragment in me was very confused. Parts of my soul anchors were for some unknown reason recognizable to it whereas the rest was not. At the same time the Dark Lord had been ripped from his body. It had nowhere nearby to return to. There was no pull, but there existed a recently activated soul anchor in me that had activated due to its presence everywhere around it. Mum's protection was also holding it from going anywhere easily. It chose me as a refuge.

My soul fragment that had been cast out returned and started integrating itself back into me. This very complex network of three very mangled and tattered souls is something I have not yet understood completely. I have too much soul. The amount of connections a soul has depends on the number of cells in a body. My own soul along with my mother's and Lord Voldemort's was almost too much. It was practically overflowing off me. The parts of the two foreign souls that could not be accommodated inside me were disintegrated. But by some good luck it stuck for long enough till a solution was provided. The curse had stuck my forehead. The rune of protection there that mum had drawn had slightly overloaded after as it completed its work. The rune had been in the shape of a lightning bolt and so was my scar.

Everyone knows what happened next. I was taken to No. 4, Privet Drive. Dumbledore had met Hagrid outside the damaged house in Godrics hollow. Now a soul that is disintegrating due to death will give out a lot of magics. To most it feels just like a spike in magic. But a sensitive enough practitioner of magic will understand what is happening. He will feel the emotions attached to the magics that are associated with the shadows of experiences in a soul as they burst out of the decaying soul. He had felt the overflowing magics in me and recognized three signatures.

Mine was relatively unknown to him considering the limited contact he had with me due to all the hiding, but still familiar enough to his very perceptive senses to recognize. He had fought Voldemort all out thrice and recognized that signature coming from me very well. A killing curse leaves a faint scent. This scent was strong still. Lily's soul, though very mangled, was recognizable enough. He theorized that the killing curse had been cast on me, but my survival and Lily's magical signature from me indicated some involvement of hers that had protected me from the most dreaded curse of magic. He also performed the Prior Incantatem spell on the Dark Lord's wand that he found lying on the floor and confirmed it. The Aurors would later repeate the test and realized the same. He felt the magics that one now associated with the disintegrating souls and concluded that I might be in danger.

Even though he only suspected what was happening, from his immense knowledge and experience, he had drawn up a scheme of wards based on first principles relying on the feel of the magics around me. They needed me around a blood relative to settle. He directed Hagrid to deliver me to my relatives as it was not advisable to apparate or portkey with infants on Sirius's bike. What happen once I was brought there was that, Dumbledore placing me with Petunia and Dudley prevented the overflowing network of souls around me from disintegrating completely. Lily's soul remnants latched on weakly to the M1b in Petunia and Dudley Dursley and slowly gained in strength. As I grew up the three souls slowly started integrating. Unfortunately Lily's soul had over the years slowly dumped all the shadows of experiences that are embedded in a person's soul in an effort to maintain its function. That was to protect me.

Over the next few years, I grew up enough to have sufficient cells for enough for the connections to form. Mine and Lily's soul slowly knitted together, but not completely due to the connections that were maintained to my relatives. Tough they never truly understood it, the ministry could never detect most magics I committed due to them dissipating through my relatives. They had to install an ultra-sensitive detector near my home. Dumbledore too had one and a series of regularly renewed tracking charms on me. During the same time a similar situation arose with the Dark Lord's soul and my body, albeit a little weaker. Over the next seven years, the shadows of experiences in Voldemort's shifted to me also through the common M1b we shared. Exactly seven years later on Halloween, the transfer completed and the fragment merged with my soul completely since it could no long make out the difference between itself and me.

Only an echo of the Dark Lords soul remained anchored to me. I had no memories from the two foreign souls. What happen can be understood if one considers what happens when a hard material, pressing on a softer one, leaves an imprint behind. The actual hard material is the original imprint on Voldemort's soul. The soft material is my soul. Voldemort's soul left no actual material. Just imprints of what were there in it. I would benefit immensely from them because there were a lot of experiences that a Dark Lord has. Most of the things I did seemed familiar to me. They seemed like things I had already done a very long time ago. The kicker would be the imprint of the Dark Lords most famous magics. Legilimency and Parseltongue. I could do them too from a very young age. All other magics that needed a focus were familiar to me once I obtained a wand. It was similar to cycling after not touching a cycle in thirty years. The first twenty years of my life, I constantly spent having a feeling of deja vu. It was amazing what magics I commanded at a very young age. The dark Lord's experience left me with the capacity to channel magics with the fineness of a seventy year old had. But the lack of a focus still left me unable to do most of them.

Some other things that the Dark Lord is famous for are his knowledge, independence and refusal to acknowledge anyone as his superior. The transfer of all these imprints to me left me a very bright and highly independent individual who never knew when to quit in the quest for anything. I was patient and would always get what I wanted, or I would get revenge.

Natural order was defied, broken and subverted to create me. So what? There is only one constant in this universe... That is change. Nothing ever remains as it was. My parents understood that. They tinkered with the natural order of the world. Were they wrong? Everyone accepts evolution and survival of the fittest as a fact. Why not use that use the capacity to better oneself or ones progeny if it is possible and within your grasp? Should one let nature decide how you are with the throw of a dice, let chance rule you, probability decide you? Not a damn chance.

The discussion of the meaning of life and ethics associated with it would be never ending. We are, as far as we can see, a collection of elementary particles arranged in a specific order. Each and every particle is following the rules of physics. Just because we have not discovered them all does not mean we are excluded from them. If the human body is just this collection of particles, what is thought? What is the meaning of life? Is there a higher purpose? Disregarding all the possible moral and ethical questions I came to the conclusion that it does not matter.

Most likely there is no meaning to life. But I think, I feel, I live. I will continue to do so to the best of my abilities as long as can be. I will try to be in what we humans call a state of happiness for as long as I can. I will do whatever i want as long as no one else is hurt by my actions. You try to impose on me and you will bee removed from my path. That is all that matters to me. Damn those who would oppose me and tell me that my happiness is dependent on how anyone else describes it or that it is dependent on the happiness of others.

I am Harry James Sirius Potter. As I grew up my life taught me many cruel lessons and from them learned how to be. Never be dependent on anyone. I refuse to be tamed, to be controlled by anyone. Try it if you dare. I do not bend or break. I end, and I will end you with me.*

*** - The last two sentences were inspired by a similar sentence from a fiction by Miranda Flairgold and her character Rahkesh Asmodeus.**

**From the next chapter onwards we fast forward to some years in the future to see Harry's life as he begins to understand that he is special.**


	3. Chapter 3: Awakening

**Authors note: **

I truly hate reading of Harry being abused worse than most of the prisoner's in death camps in Nazi Germany. I also think it's stupid to think of the Dursley's who wanted to be as normal as possible behaving like that.

I suppose many readers want a hero to rise above tremendous suffering, unbelievable odds and achieve the impossible. Harry is not going to be abused like a prisoner in a concentration camp this story.

Harry is also not going to be a pitiful kid searching for family and love. I will firmly adhere to the confident and independent Harry genre. If you want something different, read some other story.

Harry is going to evolve. I'm just giving the very basic knowledge of his childhood. It's different from the usual stories though. Hope you like it.

**Chapter: 3**

**Awakening**

Let us first take a look at the conditions in which I grew up. Was it a terrible place to live in? Was it a wonderful family that took care of me and loved me? What were the conditions that helped shape me into what I am now?

The house was on No. 4, Privet Drive, Surrey. It was an ordinary, neat house like most of the houses in that street. It was actually a very neat house…..a very, very neat house…

It had four bedrooms. One where my aunt and uncle slept, one where my cousin Dudley slept, one where Dudley stored his toys and a guest room where Vernon's sister Marge stayed when she visited. I lived in the house too. My bedroom was the cupboard under the stairs. The entire house and garden were kept spick and span by the efforts of my aunt and me.

My relatives were not truly cruel as many people tend to believe. They disliked me. There is no denying that. But they were too highly concerned about being normal to be cruel. I'm sure they thought about beating me quite a few times.

My uncle did twice (once with a belt) and my aunt once. They were so horrified of themselves later that they were rather nice to me for a few days afterwards. After all beating children is not presently thought to be 'Normal' behavior. They probably blamed me for somehow using my unnaturalness to make them behave in such cruel ways. In the end it always came back to me and my parents.

Not to say they were angels. They gave me the bare minimum possible that 'normal people' could give someone they hate. They gave me enough food to keep me healthy, a place to sleep, and my cousins cast offs and made sure I attended school. They ignored me as much as possible.

Any and all forms of behavior and thoughts that was in their definition of abnormal were severely discouraged.

Any display of such behavior, strange unexplainable incidents (most of them not caused by me) and I was locked in the cupboard under the stairs (where I usually slept) during any free times that I had. In a way I am thankful to my aunt and her family.

They taught me at a very early age that the world is a cruel place, one where everything has a price. They made me do a lot of work in and around the house.

From the age of seven, I was expected to help in keeping the house clean, the garden well tended, wash the plates and the car.

I once found out that the parents of a girl in my school had passed away and that she stayed with her relatives. I also found out that she never had to work around and inside the house.

So I went up and asked aunt Petunia why they made me do work when that girl never had to. Her face cycled through a range of emotions, going from shock, shame and anger to disgust. Then with a look of scorn she said, "Why you ungrateful, spiteful child. Dudley is my son, you are not. You expect us look after you when you were dumped into our house like a bottle of milk in the morning? Your good for nothing parents did not even have the decency to have friends who would bring you to us like normal people would have if anything happened to them. What sort of people were they? You need to earn the right to eat our food, to wear the clothes we provide and the shelter you get, boy. You are lucky we did not immediately take you to an orphanage and dump you there. And don't you dare ask any more questions"

She also regularly cursed me for any bad luck that struck the family. Sure there were occasional occurrences that I was sure I somehow caused. There was the time when my aunt got tired of me coming back from the barber's looking like I had never gone there. She took a pair of scissors and cut off most of my hair, except for a fringe that she left to cover the lightning bolt shaped scar on my forehead. Dudley had laughed nonstop for an hour when he saw me. I woke up the next morning with my hair as it had been the previous morning. I had stayed up most of the night hoping for some miracle that fixed my hair.

Being sure that I had somehow caused this miracle to occur, I had spent any free time I found the next few days in front of a mirror trying to force my hair to change color. Surprise, surprise, it did not work. I was seven years old at that point.

Then there was the time I turned my teachers' hair blue, the time I mysteriously found myself on top of the school building when I was being chased by Dudley and his gang next to the building…...

I am not normal. How could I be? I had accidently and perhaps fortunately been imprinted with shadows of the life experiences of a man who driven himself to levels beyond what most people thought possible. The discipline and ethics that were required to achieve the levels of power, control and fineness he had were some of the most ingrained behaviors in him. These factors were so well inculcated that they had become instincts rather than learned actions.

Can you understand what an edge they gave me? By the time I was eight and the Dark Lord's soul completely merged with me, I had a natural work ethic and levels of determination that had delivered to me the capacity to persevere and go beyond what most people thought possible.

Hard work is good, talent is better, experience is best. Due to my parent's hard work and the Dark Lord's mistake I had probably the highest potential for magical talent that a human child was born with. Aunt petunia's drive to make sure that I never had any free time to go and perform unnatural acts made sure I knew how to work hard.

Lord Voldemort's imprint on me did not exactly give me experience. It made sure that any experience I had that was similar to the Dark Lord's was immediately committed to memory. It also made sure that I was able to pick up skills that children spend their childhood learning in half the time the brightest of them usually takes.

Imagine what effects the Dark Lord's tendencies would have on me. I was a stubborn, determined, smart, vindictive little kid. I also learnt to hide all these qualities in me from others. I found out that display of these tendencies would get me shouted at in school and at home. I developed a blank face. I'm a terror at poker now.

Dudley was one of the main reasons that I never had friends. My rather weird maturity was no help for sure. Any kid that somehow liked me was soon a target for my class bullies. They got chased during Harry hunting, had their lunch stolen and things thrown at them during class. By the time I was nine, I had tried to make friends and having failed repeatedly decided never to try making any again.

This decision is something that I have mostly stuck to. I realized that to be my friend, one had to be prepared to face a lot of flak frequently from those around me. Of those who tried to be my friends later in life, those with weak and flimsy mental strength were soon discarded. I had no use for ones who could not hold their own.

I count in the fingers of one hand the number of friends I have. Life is simpler that way. I am not at all antisocial, just very careful in whom I let be truly close to me. To the rest I usually provide a carefree attitude that deflects undue attention.

Now that you all have (more than sufficient) knowledge of my childhood, lets get back to my discovery of magic. As mentioned earlier, it took seven years for the shadows of the Dark Lords imprints to transfer to me. I was over eight years old. It was two months since Halloween. I'd been feeling strange ever since that holiday.

I had felt something complete in me even though I never understood for a very long time after what it was.

I saw everything in a familiar light. I almost always felt that I knew what my teachers were going to say. The behavior of people never surprised me anymore. I had become extremely good in predicting the behavior of most people.

It was as if some new sense had been turned on in me. Something new was bubbling in me, feeling around, tasting and sampling everything around me. I was better aware than ever before. No…. nothing like a superhuman, just better than I had been before that Halloween.

It had been a very frustrating day at school. Dudley had spent a long time teasing me for being unwanted and I was quite mad. I was getting to be quite a few rebellious thoughts these days, but hardly any anger. Irritation was quickly becoming an uncommonly common emotion for an eight year old. I was very quickly learning to clamp down on my emotions.

We had gone home and come out to play with his gang of miscreants. I had cleaned up after tea and had been chased out of the house by aunt Petunia. Dudley and his gang of budding criminals started chasing me and I ran. After a few minutes, I got cornered in a dead end. Escape was going to be hard.

That was when things started to change. Piers took a step forward, I looked into his eyes and he pushed….on air. By the time his hand had reached me, I had moved away.

He stumbled, Malcolm moved towards me, I again stared defiantly into his eyes and was gone from the spot before his sweeping hand reached me.

Dudley charged, one look into his eyes and I had moved away and he ran right into the wall behind me. A strange confidence arose in me, a feeling that these kids would never again be able to harm me.

The three kindergarten league bullies got up surprised that they had failed to even lay a hand at me, looked at each other, and charged. The next few minutes were the most exhilarating moments of my life till then. A strange, light buzzing filled my ears as I instinctively evaded almost every push and swing from them. I knew every move they were going to make before they had made it.

They stopped, wheezing for breath and tired. I stood confidently in front of them, alert for any move from them, a smile growing on my face. I ran home and stayed there. Dudley came home later, looking strangely at me. But as most eight year kids are, he soon almost completely forgot about it when his mother got him some of her delicious snacks.

The next few days, he tried to get me in more trouble than usual. I quietly did the extra chores that my relatives assigned to me. I no longer felt any anger towards them, just a burning curiosity as to why they treated me as they did.

Life went on this way for the next year and a half. Dudley and his pals had found me a challenge. They never could accept defeat. They chased me and I ran, they cornered me and I almost always evaded every attempt of theirs at physically assaulting me. The four of us actually started developing a strange sort of relationship. I would not say we were friends, but we had stopped severely disliking each other.

Once they realized that they could not catch me, it became a game that they called the Hunt. In an effort to get me, they had to improve. If they could not, they found that I had become harder to catch. A few times, I pushed back at them. I'd cause them to trip. It made them so angry that they pestered their parents to enroll them into a class that taught them to fight.

Dudley told Uncle Vernon that he wanted to learn fighting so that he could hit me better. Vernon immediately enrolled him in the local gym to learn boxing on two days of the week. Piers faithfully followed him. Malcolm joined karate classes.

They slowly started loosing their puppy fat and learning discipline. Being around people who could kick their ass blindfolded, they learnt to stop whining. They learnt that hard work was appreciated and that nobody liked irritating brats.

Gradually they got better at cornering me and I learnt from experience and got better at evading them. From the knowledge that I got looking into their eyes when they attacked me (for some reason, initially it only happened when they were chasing me. Otherwise, I never got any flashes unless I was having an adrenalin rush), I started learning a very crude, but effective fighting style. I never had to hit anyone. All I had to do was evade and sometimes unbalance them. Gravity did most of the work and loss of pride completed my victory.

By the time I was ten, the four of us looked forward to our almost daily sessions of a highly spirited hide and seek or catch and trash. My control over the flashes of fighting insight was very slowly improving. I sometimes got flashes of information when I looked into the eyes of random people on the street. I thought that I was psychic.

Dudley still disliked me, but he was starting to respect me too. I was starting to find behind the cruel and bullying exterior, a cunning mind develop under the thrill of a hunt. The problem with improving the mind is that you start seeing the truth. Dudley slowly started realizing that I was being mistreated. It would only be years later that he could acknowledge that his parents were wrong, but the process had started.

It was accompanied by a very gradual, but occasionally noticeable decrease in tantrums and a questioning glint in his eyes when his parents said something that any rational person would understand to be wrong. Dudley Dursley was on his way to becoming a halfway descent human being.

As for me, I improved a lot in that year and a half. My mind had become very sharp. I still did not do too well in school because I just could not be bothered to listen in class anymore. The teachers droned on, the students appeared highly immature and boring to me and there were so many interesting things to think about.

When I was not with the hunters, I was in the library. I loved to understand things and so spent the majority of my free time reading scientific books for children my age and slightly above. I was getting to be very good in math and that was one class where I excelled. I was no longer being bullied as nobody could lay a hand on me. Being a loner meant that I never played any games with anyone and so had a lot of free, alone time in school.

Life was much better now compared to earlier. Then on my tenth came my discovery of magic.

I woke up as usual with my aunt banging on the cupboard door, did my chores and got chased by Dud and his gang to school. One of my classmates also had her birthday on the same day. While usually not bothered by others, today I was starting to feel incredibly lonely. I saw my classmate in a new dress, getting presents from others, her parents coming to pick her up and get a big hug and many kisses from them.

I truly missed my parents that day. I was so distracted that during the days hunt, Dudley managed to land a solid on me. I got so enraged all of a sudden and pushed him down. He was shocked for a moment and then came after me. Never managing to get me again that day, he took the only other way to get at me and complained to his mother as soon as he got home. As soon as she turned at me, he grinned at me and disappeared into his room to play with his new video game.

The statement, "How dare you raise your hand at poor Dinkydums." was followed by one of the very rare slaps that I got from her. She continued on for some time never realizing that she had completely lost me to an ice cold feeling rushing through me.

All I wanted to know at that moment was why my parents had left me here, why they could not have given me new clothes and presents and why they could not come to pick me up that day. Something was building up in me. The remnants of my mother's soul in me felt the feeling of loneliness and despair and dumped all the shadows of experience remaining in it into me and in an effort to give me some comfort.

That day it lost its originality and completely became a part of me. It also gave just enough of a kick to the shadows of experience left by the Dark Lord's soul to let me access as completely as my still developing magic could, one of his most famous magic.

Till then I could only access it in a state of heightened awareness. An adrenalin rush boosting my body and magic had been necessary. One the evening of my tenth birthday it became the first controlled burst of magic from me.

The sensors left behind by the ministry of magic and Dumbledore signaled a moderate burst of magic in the house. It also indicated that this spike in magic was not of the transfiguration variety and hence had not changed any physical object around. The perimeter wards also informed them that only my aunt was in my presence. As she was registered as knowing of the magical world, the ministry worker who filed it and Dumbledore pushed it out of their minds as an ordinary case of accidental magic.

Staring into my aunts eyes by instinct, I had asked in a voice that was calm and controlled, "How did my parents die?" and felt a strange sort of release followed by a surge of memories. The Dark Lord's Legilimency was heightened whenever he was questioning someone. He would ask someone a question related to something he wanted to know from them and his magic would, by the time of his defeat, instinctively reach out and look for the answer.

My heightened emotions, my curiosity and asking of a question while looking at the eyes of the person from whom I wanted the answer gave all the required triggers for my magic to react. Following the deeply set imprints of the most highly trained and used magic of the Dark Lord it set about quenching my curiosity.

When we hear or see something, we immediately end up recalling memories that are most closely associated with that input. Aunt Petunia's mind had gone to her hate of magic the moment it had thought of my parents.

The Legilimency probe immediately latched on to the feeling of hate for magic that Lily inspired. Guided rather roughly by the Dark Lord's experiences, my magic and mind jumped to the most interesting points for me in the memory, the word magic and the name Lily and proceeded to follow memory patterns to the recollections these words inspired.

Both I and aunt Petunia were stuck, unmoving and unresponsive for roughly seven minutes when I rummaged through various memories in a haphazard manner. My aunt had also witnessed all these repressed memories come forth as I experience them and finally her mind took the only option it could see. It shut down for some time and she fainted.

I got knocked out of my trance like state to see her crumple onto the floor and stood staring at her. The sudden influx of memories left me in no position to act normally. I stood staring at her on the floor as I slowly started making sense of the many memories I observed.

I finally knew that my mother's name was Lily and that she had gone to a school of magic when she was eleven. She had red hair and I had inherited her eyes. I knew that my aunt was jealous of her and had wished that she was magical too. I very vaguely remembered a dark, black haired boy near their house who told them about magic. His name was Snake or something.

I saw vague references to a letter to the Head of the magical school (Hog…. something) that never arrived, a letter that she had posted and a crushing feeling when the reply came that she could not attend. I saw snuffboxes turn to mice and a long slender piece of wood in a pretty red haired girls hand that shot jets of light that were hard to follow. I knew it was called a wand and that It conducted magic.

I saw a messy dark haired man (James) who looked like an older version of me and his companion, another handsome black haired man (Sirius) who made fun of her at her sisters wedding.

I heard the name Voldemort reverberate in a memory, bringing with it a feeling of terror and panic. I heard that he hated non magical people, that the spate of violence and natural calamities that were occurring randomly around the country was the work of him and his people, the he had obliterated a small castle with a single spell and that to speak his name was to invite him to torture and kill you.

I got a feeling of shock and rage in her memory of opening the front door and finding me on the doorstep, a feeling of helplessness and fear when she read a letter from a man named Dumbledore stating that my parents had been killed by the Dark Lord, that he had tried to kill me, failed and been defeated for the time being, hopelessness when she realized that she had to take me into her home or face the possibility that someone would kill me before I could walk and talk. I understood that there would be protections around the house that prevented any and all magical humans from coming here if she accepted to take me in till I turned seventeen.

I stood numbed for almost twenty minutes as I slowly processed these memories and realized why my aunt disliked me so much. In an effort to channel the feeling of rejection, she had immersed herself in religion and convinced herself that the world of magic was evil. Then I came into her life and she was convinced that I would bring evil and loss to her life.

But her religion also spoke about redemption and forgiveness. She decided to make sure that she would force the magic out of me through hard work and punishment. She tried her best in her own way to save my soul from what she considered to be the Devil. In some twisted way, she cared enough to try and save me. I felt gratitude for her for that.

But I knew that I was not evil, that I was special and there was a whole world hidden somewhere that had many people like me. I knew that for my own safety I was supposed to stay away from them till I was eleven.

By the time I had processed so much, my aunt was slowly stirring awake. I shook myself and concentrated on her. She realized that she was on the floor, slowly stood up and looked at me. "What happened? Why was I on the floor boy?"

I was wondering about how much trouble I was going to get into. My aunt was going to realized that I had accessed my evil powers. My magic (I now knew that's what it was) awoke again, this time under my conscious control. I looked into my aunts eyes and gently let it free. It was then that I realized that she had no real memory of what happened, only a vague feeling that something was wrong.

I would later realize that my haphazard and roughly used magic had accidently scrambled the last few minutes of her memory in its search for the answers that I had been looking for. I was lucky that my maturity was sufficient to absorb the information that I acquired and not react negatively.

"You tripped and fell aunt Petunia. I didn't know what to do. Do you need any help?" I wanted to completely reassure her that it was not my fault.

She looked at me suspiciously and said, "No boy. What are you doing standing there like a buffoon, just get me some water and go finish your chores. I'll sit down for some time."

I ran out of her way as she sat down trying to recollect what she had been doing before she had fainted. Unable to get any firm idea, she drank the water I gave and proceeded to glare at me until I moved away to do my chores.

Initially, the knowledge that there were people who were capable of magic made me want to run away and find the magical world. I started planning an escape. Then I remembered the reason why I was with my aunt. Despite my age, due to my special circumstances I was luckily mature enough to understand that I would be in danger without proper protection from the remnants of the Dark Lord's forces.

My use of Legilimency in such an advanced form should have been impossible if I had been normal. No ordinary child, however skilled or trained in magic would be able to achieve this feat of mine.

The next few days were some of the most interesting times of my life till then. I sat down and tried by best to properly process all the information that I had acquired. I had initially wanted to try and access more knowledge from my aunt. But my instinct and the strange glances that my aunt kept sending my way for the next few days made me rein in most of the use of my magic.

The evening following my tenth birthday, I had looked into her eyes during one of her glances and got a feeling of suspicion and mild fear. By attempts to catch her eye was making her wonder if I needed some punishment to make me remember not to challenge her so. I had tried to feed in more magic and she started to get a headache. Realizing that of magic left signs I decided to experiment on others.

I soon realized that the sort of information that I had been able to gather on my birthday was not likely to occur easily as I gave many classmates and a few teachers around me headaches in the following days.

It took me a month of effort to achieve a modicum of control on the amount of magic that I poured into my probes. I soon realized that too much magic would cause a headache. I learnt that to reach people farther away, I needed more magic. I first achieved a result equal to gathering magic inside me, then sending it out in the form of a probe. I realized that trying to include too much magic in a probe led it destabilized almost immediately after I let it out of my body.

I found that it was easier to try and feel for emotions in people than memories. It took less effort and magic. It was easiest to obtain information from someone's mind if one first mentioned some topic related to it. A direct question gave the best results most of the time. Looking at someone's eyes and sending a probe at them resulted in the viewing/hearing what they were thinking of at that moment.

I once tried as gently as possible to find the home address of one of my teachers during class when no topic related to her address was being discussed. I spent two very tense minutes trying to go past the class topic that she was discussing and the moment I broke through those thoughts she flinched and stumbled.

Exercises such as these always gave the same result. The person from whose mind I tried to extract information almost always felt some discomfort if I was looking for something that they were not currently thinking about. Also, the longer I stayed, even when they were thinking about what I was looking or led to them increasingly feel dizzy. Of course, in such cases, I could stay for around ten minutes before they started feeling any discomfort. But I very rarely was able to extract the information I was looking for. I had not found a way to make them think of the topic I was interested in.

A few years later, I would realize that my blood connection to my aunt was one of the reasons for the ease with which I extracted such a large amount of information from her mind.

My progress in the mind magics had started. I could not really do any other type of magic without some sort of focus. I had spent around two months trying to do some transfiguration and charms and had only very minor success.

Having gone through aunt Petunia's memories, I knew that wizards and witches could levitate objects. So an entire month had been spent on trying to make a pebble float. I only got the damn thing and some dirt around me to wobble after a week of practice. It required a lot of concentration and magic. Never did manage anything more till much later. As for transfiguration, managed to heat up the item that was being focused on… That was it.

By no chance did I have amazing control that allowed me to do wandless magic that sixth year wanded Hogwarts students find difficult. Legilimency is a magic that the Dark Lord could most exclusively use without any focus. It was something that he had started perfecting as a child. My better control on magic allowed me to do better than he had at the age of ten.

But there was one type of magic that I found myself excelling in as a child. That was enchanting. From some of my aunt's memories, I knew that one could make magical items. The memories being vague, I only knew that many of the magical items were prepared by writing or etching some sort of words on them and these were infused with magic. Some time later I would learn that these words were called runes.

But I had not yet learned that. So, one day I changed my strategy a bit. I was trying to levitate a piece of paper and it rose a quarter of an inch after a lot of effort before it burned down. I decided to write what I wanted to occur on the paper.

I wrote the words 'Rise up paper' on it and tried to levitate it. It did not make any difference. Thinking that there were not enough words, I wrote 'Rise up and fly piece of paper' and tried to levitate it. It failed again. Now thinking that there were too many words, I wrote 'levitate' on the paper and tried again. It failed.

I knew that I was doing something wrong. What was it? I sat down and thought for a few minutes….and ended up thinking about it for many days, writing different words on many pieces of paper, in different languages (The library helped), and failing repeatedly. After two weeks I almost gave up.

Then as I went through my aunts memories once more, I realized that I had to first infuse magic in my words. So taking a new piece of paper, I wrote 'Rise up paper' on it and tried to focus magic into the words. I concentrated on the writing, and _pushed_ my magic into the paper just focusing on the words absorbing it. After a few minutes I smelt smoke and noticed that the writing was turning black.

I was familiar with a fuse burning when there was a power fluctuation. So I assumed that I was pushing too much magic into the writing. Spending less time on forcing magic into the writing made sure that it did not burn. Trying to levitate the paper still yielded no better results. One of the interesting results I noticed during these experiments of mine was that, more the words, the longer it took to start the paper burning. Also, using different pens changed the time taken for the words to start to char and smoke.

There were too many variations. So I went to the library, got a book on scientific methodology for children and started to repeat my experiments much more systematically. I was obsessed in trying to understand the reason for the different results. The book suggested that I make sure to have minimum variation in experiments.

I first got a big empty book and started to not all my observations in them. I took another book and all my paper came from it. I made sure to make all the pieces of paper be of the same size. I took one pencil and wrote all the words with it. I finished one set of experiments and changed the size of the paper used for the next set. After performing my experiments I compared results and came to the following conclusions.

The experiment was to see how long it took a piece of paper to burn after I started focusing magic into the words written on it (I kept my hand on the writing on the paper and forced the magic into it). I varied the amount of writing, size of the paper and the pencil. These were the conclusions. These were the first laws of magic that I formulated. As anyone can see, they hardly sound like proper laws, but hey, I was a child then.

_**The size of the words that I wrote on the paper mattered**__._ Words of small size caused the paper to burn. Larger the size, less the burning (I had taken to writing 'Rise up paper' in different sizes).  
_**The number of words mattered**_ when all words in different papers were of the same size. More the words, the longer it took to start burning.  
_**If no word is written on the paper, it will not burn however long I focus magic into it.**_ (Very strange looking at conclusion no. 2)  
_**The size of the line that makes up the words matters**_. The finer the lines, the faster the paper burned given that I wrote a specific word of same size in different pieces of paper.

To give some reference, it took me around sixteen seconds of focusing magic on the words 'rise up paper' written in what is roughly considered small handwriting to get it to start burning.

Then, as is the case in many of the discoveries around the world, the accident that gave me a most important clue occurred. I got a paper cut. Till now I had not achieved levitation. Only lots and lots of pieces of burned paper. I started using paper from a different book to see if the type of paper mattered. I had written 'Rise up paper' on another sheet and was cutting it from the book when I got the cut.

Cursing loudly, I sucked my finger, placed that slightly blood stained sheet of paper on the table and promptly forgot about it. A few minutes later I had another piece of paper ready and started focusing magic into it.

I immediately noticed a greater than usual drain in magic. I usually had very good control on the amount of magic I gave out. I let it proceed as I was curious as to the cause. After twenty seconds, the writing blackened and started smoking. This was consistent with a previous experiment with the same parameters.

Frustrated, I sat back looked around and froze in absolute and complete shock. The bloodstained piece of paper that I had discarded was floating about a foot above the ground. I was not even channeling magic into it. It stayed so for around five more seconds before it started losing altitude and in three more seconds it was lying on the floor. There wasn't even the slightest of burn marks on the paper.

I continued staring at it in shock as my mind and magic frantically searched for connection. A memory rushed through my mind of Lily saying "No Tuney, the wand has wood on the outside and a magical conductor inside. That's why it makes it easier to use magic with it."

These words reverberated in my head. The connections formed. The correct ideas were formed easily as the many thoughts running through my mind and hence my soul filled the imprints left by the Dark Lord's soul. I had a moment of clarity as so much made sense.

Another memory of my aunt where Lily had said, "We are sisters Tuney. We share blood and hence magic. Nothing conducts magic better than blood. You may not agree or believe me, but Blood always endures. Everything we do will always be linked for we will always be of the same blood." And another memory where lily said, "When we write something, our hopes and desires are written with it. We leave an imprint of our thought in it. That's how magical contracts work. The magic looks at the desire of the words written and if done properly, it can force one to comply to the magic."

Magical conductor….. Blood…. Blood wards…..most powerful….my magical blood…..a powerful conductor of magic…..

The writing focused the will and left an imprint of my desire….The blood conducted the magic I supplied and through the words it performed the required task till it ran out.

Standing there staring at that piece of paper as I made sense of what had occurred, I knew that my life was changing. I could literally feel the change in the air. Much later I would understand that a paper cut had significantly altered my life and whatever of my divination skill was active, was recognizing the divergence from one path to another.

Before we go back to how much that day changed my life, lets go back to some of what I've told you all. You know now that I was secretly practicing magic. When I first started my experiments, I realized that aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon would never stand for it. I had also realized from my increasing Legilimency that people feared anything that was outside the norm. However politically correct the so called civilized world is at present, there remains in all of us the fear of the unknown, of the different.

If people around me saw me doing anything unnatural, I would be in a lot of trouble. I also knew that if my relatives got to know, I would be relegated to the cupboard under the stairs for a long time. I had become daring enough now that the thoughts of people were known to me. I knew how they would react. So I searched for and found an empty house half a mile from No. 4.

The house was locked due to some legal problems and no one entered it. The garden was overgrown and provided me enough protections from the eyes of nosey neighbors. One of the windows was open and a tree growing near it provided me the access to it. As it was on the way from school, I found it to be the perfect place to conduct my many experiments. There was a cellar which I happily commandeered for my use.

As for the materials for my experiments, I started stealing. Like I said, the thoughts of people were open to me. It was easy to steal a few books, pens, pencils, candles, lighters and a few flashlights for me to conduct my experiments with. It had taken me a very short time to become a moderately good thief.

I occasionally picked the pockets of random men on the street and saved the money I found for emergencies. I had actually collected around a hundred and fifty pounds over three months. As I did not steal too much, the police had no cause to be overtly vigilant and no real alarms were raised.

The Dark Lord's soul had made sure that my morals were a bit skewed. I had no friends to wonder about my disappearances and the hunt had given up trying to find me after a few days and gone on to find easier targets. My aunt and uncle cared not of what I did as long as I finished my chores on time and did not bother them.

Getting back to my discovery…

I was positively ecstatic for a few days. My aunt noticed this and gave me extra chores to keep me from what she was sure was trouble. After all how on earth could me being happy be good? It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I did not have time to go to my lab, but had enough of it after chores to sit in the nearby park and think and come to solid conclusions.

I sat down and wondered how to get enough of my blood to regularly perform magic. I realized that if I only needed something that was a part of me, I had hair. When my chores had reduced after two weeks, I was back experimenting. I had stolen a few syringes and needles. I had checked out some books on anatomy and soon knew where to find blood vessels to extract blood from.

In the first day of my experiments including blood I realized that I need not use fresh blood. The old blood stained sheet that had been lying on the floor rose again. But after conducting an experiment with fresh blood got by pricking my finger on a pin sterilized on a lighter flame, I knew that it was better than old blood.

The sheet with fresh blood rose higher with lesser magical input. All I had to do was to write 'levitate' on a sheet of paper thinking of how I really wanted the paper to float, put a drop of blood on it, focus magic into the blood and wish for the sheet to rise. It happily did so.

In a week I realized that the paper only needed to have the minimum required words on it that gave an idea of what it had to do. A paper with the words 'fly', 'obey' and 'Harry Potter' with drops of blood on each word could be controlled easily as long as I was close to it and supplying it with a steady stream of my magic. Funnily enough I soon realized that to minimize the words and write HP on the paper worded just fine. When the initials 'HJP' were on the paper, the control became smoother.

I realized that I had to write the words and the same words taken from a book written by someone else would not word at all. It was my will that controlled the levitating object. It had to be my hand that, guided by my will that wrote the words.

I had quickly discarded the idea of using my hair as I had at the moment no idea as to how I could make the hair a part of the paper, nor write any words on it.

My use of magic through my blood had a side effect. See, I had learnt to control the amount of magic sent into the blood on the paper. I also noticed that when I tried to send the magic to a paper without blood on it, the magic was rather uncontrolled and most of it seemed to leak off into the surrounding.

I was going home a few weeks after my discovery having made some excellent progress in my control. The moment I crossed the gate into the yard, I felt the very slight siphoning of my magic into the surroundings. It stopped after a few minutes during which I stood still getting a feel of whatever it was that was sucking on my magic. I was understandably worried for the next few days. I now noticed this loss in magic every time I came home in the evenings. The longer I stayed outside the house, the larger the amount of magic lost was.

One day, my aunt picked me and Dudley from school as she had gone shopping. She gave me several of the items to carry and walked alongside me into the yard and realized something. My magic was being siphoned through her. The pull was most definitely towards her.

I realized in a few moments that this very minimal loss in magic was towards the blood wards that kept me safe. The vague contents of a letter aunt Petunia had got with me flashed through my mind. My mothers sacrifice would keep me safe as long as my aunt took me in and gave me a home. Our shared blood was using my magic siphoned through her to keep all magical being away from here.

My aunt was not at all happy with the amount of time I spent in the yard the next few days. I KNEW that magic left an imprint when it was used. I could touch and in a few minutes guess which of the many sheets of blood stained papers now littering the floor of my lab had worked. I did not have to read the words on it. I spent the next few days trying to understand the wards and learnt more than any kid my age should know about wards.

I learnt very soon that to feel the intention behind a ward, one first has to send out a pulse of magic when focused on gaining an understanding of the ward. The first time I did that, I almost fainted when I got a feedback. There was so much information. This of course started me on my path to understanding Occlumency. In an attempt to understand the feedback, I sat down sent out a probe and then focused as much of my magic as I could on slowly filtering the information I received.

It worked…..sort of. While I was not overpowered by the magic, I did not get any useful information either. All I received was a faint jumble of emotions. I soon realized that the emotions were very similar to the feel of the papers I had used for my experiments. The directive behind the ward crafters commands always had some emotion tied to it (He/she must have been a sentient being after all).

After two days of trying to filter out the emotions I had to quit standing around in the yard. My aunt had noticed me spending too much time around the house and either got me to do some chores or chased me away. So I started spending time before I went to sleep on understanding wards. I started focusing on individual emotions and trying to follow back to the specific purpose of a ward. My evenings I spent on further experimentation. I'll get back to that after some time

I already mentioned that Dumbledore had crafted the blood wards using my mothers disintegrating soul. Around two weeks after I started trying to understand wards, I was focusing on the despair I had felt the day I went through my aunts memories when I sent out the probe. What I got back was a feel of comfort and safety that I would soon associate with my mothers sacrifice.

From then on, whenever I felt sad, I used this method to feel a mothers love. I knew for certain that I was loved even though Lily was dead. No comment about my being an orphan ever hurt me again as I knew beyond any doubt that I had been loved.

Behind the feelings of comfort and safety I started getting to know a wizard. The fineness, control of magic and iron determination that had crafted the blood wards was completely out of the world. The intent I felt behind my flying sheets felt like the faintest of breeze on a still day. The intent behind the blood wards was like the force of a hurricane focused into a pin point. The feel behind the wards gave me the idea that it was a man that had crafted them.

I knew now by taking the knowledge that my magical senses gave and comparing it to the memories I got from my aunt that there was a wizard named Albus Dumbledore and that he was a person to be feared and respected. I arrived to this conclusion after weeks of figuring out the wards. I noticed that there were wards cast by a few other people. Their intent could be compared to a heavy wind at best. I knew just by the feel that it was not the crafter of the blood wards who had cast these comparatively flimsy wards.

I soon categorized the wards. The blood ward that had the intent to protect me was by far the strongest. There were many other wards. There were two that had the intent to redirect a bird? I was quite confused by those two.

There were two that only seemed to have the intent to look at me. After two hours of concentrating on it, I realized that it was looking for my magic. More specifically, it was looking or my discharging a large amount of magic. Of the above two, I was sure that Dumbledore had cast one each. The remaining two gave the feel of two different people and I gave up on them as soon as I realized their purpose (confusing as the purpose seemed to be).

There was one cast by Dumbledore that seemed to have the intent to keep me unknown. After a lot of time spent on it, I understood that this ward was constantly searching for intent driven magics that were looking for me and then dispersing it. It was probably a ward to prevent anyone from using magic to find my location.

I also found out that the ward was stronger in the corners of the house. It seemed as if the magics composing the ward flowed into the corners of the house from the centre of the house. I had to lie down in one corner of the house and send strong probes into the soil until I finally understood that there was something there that helped hold the wards in place.

Once when my relatives had gone out and left me in the house for an hour, I sent the strongest probe that I could manage right into the centre of the house where the magic seemed to originate. Three words came to my mind. Renew, Revive and Resurrect. After some more attempts, I concluded that this was the ward being recharged with magic from the surrounding. It would be much later that I learnt the actual significance of these words.

As I started learning more about some of the best wards in existence I also continued my experiments. Now I could not only get pieces of paper to levitate, but also to burst into flame. It had been quite simple. All I had to do was write 'burn' on the paper, put a drop of blood on it, focus some magic into it and then let out a small burst of magic as I hoped that the paper would catch fire.

The first time I tried it I accidently set off a blast of fire that singed my eyebrows. Luckily no one noticed them much except uncle Vernon who complained about the smell of burnt hair when I was around.

I had so many ideas floating around in my head that I hardly had enough time to try out most of them. I soon had pieces of paper floating around, catching flame, changing color, stones with words scratched on them and drops of dried blood on them that zoomed around me in near perfect control, pieces of wet clay with my hair stuck in the centre, words embossed on and dried that also levitated, changed color without a drop of blood on them (Thought the time for which it worked was much lesser than with paper and blood and stone and blood) and some more small items.

I was giddy with excitement for months, experimenting like a mad scientist and hardly noticing that my eleventh birthday was approaching. I learnt so much about magic in those months and had an understanding of wards that any apprentice curse breaker or ward maker would give an arm and a leg for. Those were some of the most fulfilling days of my life. I never did manage any transfiguration though. I was soon to realize that I did not have the understanding required to actually transfigure matter.

I realized early on that what I was doing was not wandless magic. It was magic channeled through a conductor even though it was not a wand. I still struggled with true wandless magic and hardly achieved anything more than the wobbling of pebbles and small pieces of paper. But I struggled on happily.

I was truly happy in those days. I hardly had any problem at home now as I did all my chores on time and I knew that my relatives were keeping me alive even though they hardly cared for me. I knew that my mother had loved me and that removed a lot of my insecurities. I was still a loner and did not care for anyone beside myself. When I occasionally got frustrated or bored of my experiments I gave Dudley and gang a chance at a hunt and so kept fit and healthy (stolen food whenever I was hungry helped a lot).

Then a few weeks before my eleventh birthday, we went to a zoo. Things were never the same again in No 4, Privet Drive, Surrey.

_**Review, Review, Review….**_

**Author note:**After a long time, a nine thousand word chapter. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it. If there are inconsistencies, please let me know and I will fix them.

There are probably lots of spelling and grammar mistakes. I am looking for a beta… I really need help as I am very hard pressed for time these days. If anyone is interested, please apply for a position as a beta. I will be very grateful for it.

_**If you find any clichés, please point them out to me.**_

_**Review, Review, Review….**_

_**They make me want to write more…**_

_**Cheers ….**_


	4. Chapter 4: Into the abyss

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own the characters or plot created by J K Rowling. I'm only playing with the plot and characters for fun._

**Authors Note**: _I'm terribly bored of all the stories where Snape, McGonagall or Flitwick come to take Harry for his shopping and in a few minutes give him enough knowledge to get out of Dumbledore's clutches, take him to St. Mungo's to heal his malnutrition, get his inheritance from overtly friendly goblins to whom Harry is the only respectful human in this century, get him to take part in a goblin ritual that gets rid of the horcrux in him, yada, yada…. _

_Many of my reviewers have let me know that the previous chapters are too dry. I'm trying to fix that in this chapter. Hope it's more enjoyable._

_I know Dudley's birthday is not a few weeks before Harry's. But this is fanfiction. So, what the hell._

_Hope you guys and gals reading this chapter like the differences in this story._

"Normal speech"'

"_Parseltongue"_

**Chapter 4: Into the Abyss**

I was sleeping, a good deep sleep, the kind that one gets in the early hours just before its time to rise when aunt Petunia's shrill voice woke me up. It would turn out to be a very interesting day.

"Up! Wake up! Now!"

I woke up with a start just as my aunt rapped on the door sharply and said again, "Up!". The sound of her walking to the kitchen and placing the frying pan on the stove drifted in through the beaten up doors of the cupboard. Rolling on to my back I tried to recall the dream I had been having, one where I was on a flying motorcycle. That dream came quite frequently in my sleep, for some unknown reason.

She was back in front of the door a few seconds later, "Are you up yet?" she demanded. "Nearly aunt Petunia" I grumbled. It was time for my daily chores.

"Well, get moving you cretin. I want you to look after the bacon and you better not let it burn. Its Dudley's birthday today and I want everything perfect. Don't you dare spoil anything today." She said.

Of course today was Dudley's birthday. I remembered it quite well. He was my cousin after all. But aunt Petunia would be demanding perfection in everything I did today. That was a bother. I would have to make sure that no mistakes were made during the cooking. I got off the bed and rooted around for a pair of socks. Finding a pair and pulling off a couple of spiders (my frequent, but harmless companions in the cupboard) from them, put them on, followed by a pair of ratty shoes, got dressed and prepared for my day.

Getting out of the cupboard, I realized that it was getting a bit cramped in there. I was a growing boy and my access to a moderately healthy diet was showing some results. But I was not too bothered about it as I knew that there would be a letter to that school of magic soon. I never did get the name of the school from my aunt's mind through my probes. She hated the name so much that she only referred it to as 'That horrid school of freaks' the few occasions that I tried directing her thoughts to my future schooling.

I went down the hall into the kitchen. The dining table was almost hidden beneath all the presents that had been sent to Dudley. It looked like he had got the new computer he wanted along with the racing bike he'd dropped hints about to his parents. That was going to make it rather easy for him to chase me on the roads. Not that I would be on those for long during a hunt. Hmm…. Would he dump it and run after me or give up out of fear of losing his brand new cycle? That would be interesting to see.

At least it would see some good use these days. Dudley was getting into a relatively healthy humans shape these days. All that boxing training and running was really paying off. He could throw a mean punch. I snickered as the images of him trying to catch me a few days ago passed my mind. It really was easy to irritate him. He'd threatened to punch the shit out of me. But all the training and swear words he was learning in the gym was never good enough to catch me. Poor Dudley.

At least his decrease in size benefited me. His reduction in size had required purchasing new, smaller clothes. I no longer had clothes that were four times bigger than me. They were baggy, but tolerable. People seeing me did not wonder anymore what a miniature scarecrow was doing walking around in the street. I know that for sure as I checked the thoughts passing through the minds of new people who showed an interest in me.

I was turning over the bacon when uncle Vernon entered the kitchen. "Comb your hair!" he barked by way of a morning greeting. About once a week, he'd look over the newspaper and shout that I needed a haircut. I'd probably had more haircuts than those had by all my class boys put together, but it never made a difference. My hair simply grew that way, all over the place.

I was absentmindedly frying the eggs, thinking of ways to use the shield I'd developed through my crude blood and word powered magics. Star wars had been telecast recently on TV and had given me so many ideas that I was rather absent minded these days. Thoughts of other people showed me that I seemed to have a faraway look on my face frequently.

The words 'shield me', a drop of blood and sufficient concentration let me create an invisible shield around my hand for a few seconds as long as the paper was still in my hand. Watching a rerun of the Star Wars movies had paid big dividends. I could now punch walls as hard as I could without hurting myself. It was really fun. It was worth all the aches I had in my hands when I was experimenting with the shield.

By this time, Dudley had arrived in the kitchen and was counting his presents. He was a bit put out that he got only 37 presents when he had been given 38 the previous year. The old Dudley would have made a huge fuss about it, but the improved one did not. Uncle Vernon even offered to buy him a few more, but Dudley decided that what he got was sufficient. He was starting to impress me a bit with his improving maturity. It was good to know that the apple that fell so very close to a tree could roll off a distance given a few small nudges.

Hearing his refusal of more presents started off aunt Petunia. "Oh, my darling Diddydums, such a sweet and unselfish boy. I'm sure there is no better boy anywhere around. Always thinking of others…" That went on for a few more minutes when I zoned out and I thought back to the near disaster last week.

A week back I had been given the task of weeding the garden and instead had been trying to get a flower to bloom by my usual method of channeling magic through sheets of paper with words and blood on them.

I really should have known better than to try magic in my aunt's garden where the results would be visible.

My aunt came back from her shopping to find along with the carefully weeded garden, the wilted buds on her prize rose bush. For once she was right in blaming me for the damage, not that I accepted any of the blame. I was pulled be the ears in front of the bush and shouted at for almost half an hour.

Luckily, she had not realized that it was my conscious use of magic that had caused such a disaster. I don't even want to imagine the punishment I'd have got for that. Looking at her memories during her rant let me know that she suspected that my magic had done the damage. I was sent to the cupboard under the stairs without dinner for the next three days and more chores to keep me busy and with no time to get on with my usual shenanigans.

The destruction of her prize flowering plant had made sure that my relatives were loath the leave me alone in the house for any duration of time.

There was no way I was going to take any more blame if I could escape it. Making sure that the next week my behavior had been almost perfect had been a bit of a pain, but worth it at the end. The elder Dursley's had stopped looking at me as if they expected my clothes to suddenly transform into a garish multicolored monstrosity that would prove to them that I was a freaky and unnatural boy who did not deserve their kindness and generosity.

The younger Dursley had just stepped up the hunt for making his parents shout at me and ruin his TV time with the noise. The hunt had been waning for some time. It went back to the same level it was during my pre-magic discovery days for a couple of days. After that he got bored of it due to his repeated failure in capturing me and he proceeded to put more effort into his boxing classes and things got back to normal.

I was jerked out or my daydreaming by the shrill sound of the telephone ringing. Aunt Petunia answered it and grew more and more annoyed as she listened to the speaker on the other end of the phone.

The Dursley's had been planning a trip to the zoo on Dudley's birthday. They had not even considered taking me. I really wanted to go and see animals in reality. Pictures in books are rather boring. U can hardly get a feel of the animal from them.

Unfortunately for them and luckily for me, they found no caretaker to take me. Batty old Mrs. Figg, my usual caretaker had gone off and broken a leg and had called to tell my aunt that she could not look after me. My aunt and uncle had discussed leaving me somewhere else and realized that they had no option of doing so at that time. The Dursley's had no intention of leaving me alone in the house after the fiasco in the garden.

So off we went to the zoo with a warning form Uncle Vernon. "One unnatural act from you boy, and you will not see daylight for the next year. Get it?"

"Yes Uncle Vernon. I will be a very good boy. I won't be a nuisance at all. Thank you for taking me with you" I smiled at him happily for getting a chance to go to the zoo instead of sitting with batty old Mrs. Figg.

"I'll hold you onto that boy." The whale of a man promised. "Try anything like that stunt you pulled with the flowers last week and you'll get it from me."

"I'm not going to do anything. Honestly," I lied to him quickly. "I think the plants got too much water the week before. They just happened to wither away that day when I was gardening."

Piers had been dropped off at the house a few minutes before by his mother. He and Dudley were already planning on pushing me into the moat with crocks. Though I knew they would never do that, I made up my mind to not be anywhere near them during the trip.

While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.

"… roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.

"I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Harry, remembering suddenly. "It was flying."

Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a mustache: "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!"

Dudley and Piers sniggered.

"I know they don't," said Harry. "It was only a dream." Uncle Vernon was turning an interesting shade of red and I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the drive. Not that his shouting mattered to me anyway. I was so used to it that it slid off me easier than a kid on a smooth slide.

It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursley's bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked me what I wanted before they could hurry me away, they bought me a cheap lemon ice pop.

It wasn't bad, either, I thought licking it. I'd told the Dursley's that I did not want to disturb them and after telling me to be at the exit at a certain time, they happily let me wander off on my own taking my unnaturalness with me.

I had a great time looking at different animals and brushing up on the thoughts of people looking at them. There was such a variety of interpretations of an animal by them. I even tried finding the thoughts of the animals. I could only get very vague emotions of hunger, anger, thirst, annoyance and contentment from them. Not a single true thought from anyone. The chimps were slightly better than the rest. The flashes of emotions were accompanied by a few very, very indistinct images. But it kept me happily absorbed till I realized that I only had half an hour more before the Dursley's would be expecting me at the exit.

I reached the reptile house and was happy to get into the cool and dark rooms. There were all sorts of lizards and snakes around. Long poisonous cobras, man crushing pythons and anacondas, vipers and corals were spread around the rooms in glass enclosures. Most were coiled around a tree branch or in a cool corner.

To my annoyance, I heard Dudley and Piers nearby. Turning around, I spotted them walking towards me. They caught sight of me and came forward.

"Hey Dudley," said Piers, "Think little Harry could run off if he had a Python crushing him?" and pointed behind me to the enormous Python curled up right in front of the glass that I had been looking at a few seconds earlier.

Dudley gave some answer that I completely ignored because I had turned around and was looking at the snake. I gave it a small nudge with my magic. The moment the feedback from my probe reached me, something stirred in my gut, something new and unusual, and something that I had not experienced before. The huge snake stirred and looked at me as if sensing the change in my magic. Snakes all around the glass house had started to move.

My magic was moving on its own…. Well, technically it was following the Dark Lord's imprints in me. Through preset channels, my magic twisted and turned till it finally settled down into a form that was not something that I was familiar with. The ability to change magical signatures my parent's experiments had instilled in me had awoken at last and shifted my magic to the feel of the snake.

The snakes all came up to the glass separating them from the others, raised their heads and turned their eyes towards me. People were exclaiming in surprise at the sudden, unexpected and uncharacteristic movements of the usually uninterested reptiles. Dudley and Piers looked on from behind me in shock as the python lifted its head till its eyes were level with mine. I sent another probe directly at it and two things happened very quickly.

I felt a sudden and terrific shift in my magic. It was as if I had been yanked sideways, yet the feeling was completely natural….it was wonderful. A surge of magic was rising from around my chest and spreading through me when Dudley roughly pushed me aside in an effort to get a good look at the giant snake that had locked eyes with me.

The sudden jerk made me loose balance both mentally and physically and down I fell. I heard a hissing voice say "_How dare you harm him_" and all hell broke loose.

The snake was now coiling out in to a seemingly unending length and moved towards Dudley who stood for a millisecond in shock till his instincts kicked in and he ran like the devil himself was after him. People all around in the room panicked and ran out. The shock of seeing the snake out of the enclosure completely removed my annoyance and anger.

The nine foot long snake had moved out of the enclosure and had turned towards me. I was alone in the room with a huge snake looking at me. It seemed to be waiting for me to do something. My instincts imprinted on me by the Dark Lord's soul fragment finally kicked in and I calmly rose up. A feeling of peace, power and confidence flooded through me.

I knew without doubt that no snake however poisonous that was in the room could, or would harm me. The original feeling of the shift remained and with it slowly, but surely, a detachment from emotion that the best master martial artist would give an arm and a leg for spread through me like an icy cold, chilling rush of water.

I could feel that the magic was still draining out of me at a rate that would have had me unconscious in any other case. I felt more powerful than ever before. I took my eyes off the snake and looked at the glass of the enclosure and found it still there. Trying to lay a hand on it showed it to have the consistency of a soap bubble. My hand passed through it easily.

My mind was working furiously and I turned to the snake and said "_Get back in, you over sized piece of rope._" I realized that there was something different with my speech, but did not at that moment understand the cause or that the speech was different. I only noticed a strong flow of magic through my mouth. It's quite a funny feeling. The flow stopped the moment I stopped speaking.

"_Yessss…. Massster…_" the snake said and calmly moved back into the enclosure and the moment it was fully in, I let the flow of magic from me slow down to a trickle and in a few seconds stopped it completely. The glass returned to its former solid state with a small flash of blue light.

The zookeepers would surely be terribly confused when they came here. But that was not what I was wondering about. I knew that there was no way to hide this from my relatives. I would finally have to confront them about my knowledge of magic. I could not deny my knowledge of it anymore.

This was a completely unexpected, but salvageable situation. I had hoped for contact and hopefully help from the wizarding world before confronting them, but would have to rely on what I had learned till now.

The emotional detachment was being slowly replaced with a rising panic and awareness of the situation from the perspective of a human rather than an unfeeling blob of highly ordered atoms.

I turned around and ran.

I later learnt that the Ministry of Magic had detected the surge and fixed the situation. They had used a tricky bit of magic to detect most of the people who had been in and around the reptile house and obliviated those of the memory of seeing or hearing of what happen in the reptile house.

My mother's protection, following the protection Dumbledore had sculpted with it had, like it did with all magic that searched for me and mine dissipated the ministry's probes and my involvement with it was never recorded. It had also made sure that Dudley and aunt Petunia who shared my blood was not detected and through them Uncle Vernon escaped detection.

I had escaped being noticed by anyone as I slipped out of the enclosure and run through the bushes near the door to the reptile house. I made my way to the gate and waited for the Dursley's to show up preparing for what would be one of the biggest confrontations in my life till now with them.

When I reached the gate, I found it crowed with people getting away from a zoo where snakes capable of eating them escaped from cages.

Dudley was cowering behind his parents who took one look at me and turned from concerned parents to scared and furious parents who wanted to protect their brood from the dangerous and uncontrollable villain who they harbored in their home.

"Boy….. let's just get home now. I'm going to whip your hide off. I always knew that you were a bad egg, but I'd thought that staying with decent, god fearing people would have shown you the good path." Said Uncle Vernon.

He shushed aunt Petunia who was about to add in her two cents and turned back to me. "Get in the car right now, you cretin. Let's get home before anyone connects what happen in the snake house to my family."

He rushed us to the car and we started back home. The entire journey was punctuated by curses from Vernon and hateful looks from Petunia. Dudley looked on, slightly fearful and curious about what was happening to his parents. His mind was trying to convince itself that the glass had just fallen off and he had not noticed it in fear and shock.

I was trying my best to be calm. I realized that I was just going from the frying pan into the fire and moving slowly so as not to alert the Dursley's, went through my pockets trying to figure out what papers were there.

I had taken to carrying around a few of my focus sheets around to use in interesting situations. I made a note of my resources and started breathing slowly in an effort to calm myself. After a few minutes, I calmed down sufficiently enough to take stock of the situation and it sunk in that the game was up.

A tentative probe let me know that the Dursley's were going to belt the hell out of me. I had put their son in danger and that was the limit. I thought back to the feeling of calm that had enveloped me in the reptile house and the memory of it gave me courage. I started trying to get it back.

We were pulling in outside the house when I realized that the strange feeling I'd got was related somehow to the snake.

The Dursley's were getting down when I concentrated enough to remember and grasp the feel of the magic I used when I commanded the snake. Uncle Vernon pulled me out of the car when I twisted the magic into the form I'd used.

We crossed the threshold of the house when the wards reacted to the change and feeling the need for more power, pumped magic into me.

We were all standing in the dining room when Uncle Vernon, who had taken a gulp of brandy from the cabinet, looked at me and said, "Dudley, go to your room. NOW!" And then he turned towards me. Dudley tossed one fearful look at me, turned around and reached the door when I'd completely recreated the feel and power behind my feat at the zoo. The shift happened. I said, "Stay, Dudley" and immediately got backhanded into the wall.

If uncle Vernon had hit me a moment earlier, things would probably have gone very differently. But my magic had already shifted my mind to a state of minimum emotion. I felt a sliver of shock that was ruthlessly quashed along with the surge of anger and fear.

"Who do you think you are, Freak? Telling my son what to do in my own house? I never thought it would come to this, but you've gone too far with your un-naturalness. I'm going to whip you to shape boy."

I calmly got up, ignoring the pain in my jaw and back, said, "I'd love to see you try Uncle. You can't touch me." My magic poured out of me with the fineness that most accomplished legilimences lacked and found nothing but rage in his mind.

Dudley stood stunned at the door, aunt Petunia started moving forward when Vernon's hand swung again. This time I was ready. I reached into my magic and the focus sheet for shielding apparently sprang out of my pocket on its own. It hovered out in front of me and by the time the Dursley's processed the fact that there was a sheet of paper hovering in their house on its own, received a rush of magic and the words burned...

My uncle's hand hit something before my face that gave off a sight glow at the point of contact. The reactionary force made him stagger. The sheet of paper with words burned into it slowly floated down to the floor as the glow from where his hand had hit the shield gently faded. I could feel the shield, still strong and vibrant to my senses dissipate the force of the blow a few scant millimeters in front of my face as it hugged my body.

The Dursley's stood in shock and I took a step forward and said in what was according to my mind probe, the calmest voice they had ever heard,

"My Name is not Boy….. I am Harry James Potter, son of Lily and James Potter. I am a wizard, and there's nothing you can do about it."

It took another four hours of talking, threats of violence, aunt Petunia crying, uncle Vernon shouting and Dudley whining before we all finally came to the ending of the episode. The Dursley's finally accepted that they had failed to keep me ignorant of magic.

Uncle Vernon was livid that I had decided to be a freak that goes against all their good religion and common decency. He was resigned to it, but despised me for making him loose to a ten year old boy. He never could take failure.

Aunt Petunia was distraught that she would have to see another family member go into the dangerous and despicable world of magic that had resulted in the death of her parents and sister. Even though she refused to accept it, she was also afraid of again feeling the crushing jealousy of being a distant spectator to the wonders of magic that she was incapable of and had ruined her relationship with Lily.

Poor Dudley was very confused and wished he understood why his parents hated the possibility of me being capable of really cool feats. He would in the future constantly battle with the fact that I was capable of altering the very fabric of nature while he was an ordinary human. He won some and lost some of those battles.

At the end of those four hours Uncle Vernon stood up and said, "Boy, we tried our best to keep you on the good path. You have failed us. I am terribly disappointed to see that you have decided to go on to a world of heathens who. I hope someday you will understand why we tried so hard to keep from you this evil that you can do. If you don't... May God have mercy on your soul."

"Petunia, let him go to his wretched kind. We are done with him. Let him come and go as he pleases. He has shown very clearly that he has gone to the evil path." He turned to me and said, "Do what you must boy, but never utter or perform your evil in this house. It is still mine and as long as you call this place your home, you will not pollute my family with your freakishness."

"I have never wanted to hurt you or yours Uncle Vernon. I will not trouble you. I know that I will be going to the school soon and I will be gone for the most part of the next seven years. While I am here, I will do my best to keep our worlds separate and expose you all to the minimum possible of it." The lies slid off smoothly from my tongue.

"Aunt Petunia, I know you think of me as a curse. I am sorry it has come to this. I will be in my best behavior while I am here and I hope in time to make you all realize that I am not the devil's disciple or anything like that."

I realized by the time that I said this much that they were beyond the point of truly listening to me. They just wanted me out of their face. So I complied and went to my new room. Oh, did I forget to mention that in between these four hours I had managed to convince them that it would be good for me to get Dudley's second room?

The shift had ended around two hours earlier. I was terribly tired and just wanted to rest. I told them that I was going to sleep and left. I reached my new room and tiredly cleared up the bed and crashed on it. I woke up almost fifteen hours later.

The next day I ached in places I didn't know on could have aches in. Point to self...channeling large amounts of magic will make one hurt similar to the way that a person who excessively exerts themselves physically hurts. It took two days before I tried to attempt any magic. By then, the pain had reduced to an ignorable level.

These two days were some of the strangest days of my early life. The elder Dursley's ignored me to the best of their abilities. Dudley occasionally sent a confused look at me. But that was it. I pondered if this must be how ghosts felt like. To be around and not be observed at all. The elder Dursley's had ordered Dudley to have no interaction with me. That suited me just fine.

I cleaned up my new room and settled in comfortably. There was finally a place in the house that could serve as a safe haven for me to try some of my experiments. At least a place where I could fine tune and refine the magics that I found would work without the possibility of it blowing up in my face and alerting the Dursley's that I was doing the very thing that I promised them I would not do in their home just a week back.

I did all my chores as usual and aunt Petunia kept a place for me on the table as usual. During dinner, uncle Vernon spoke to the others and completely ignored me. If I made any sound, there was a tense silence lasting a few seconds before they continued speaking ignoring me.

The days went by in this strange fashion for a week and then came the letter.

All the tension ebbed away from me soon as I saw it. A letter made out of some thick yellowish paper addressed in emerald green ink to

**Harry Potter  
The smallest bedroom  
No. 4 Privet Drive  
Little Whinging  
Surrey**

Turing it over I found a purple wax seal with a coat of arms that had a lion, snake, badger and raven surrounding a large letter H. I stood for a few minutes in delight. At long last, time to go get my birthright.  
On opening it a sheet of paper of similar material as the cover slid out which had the following written in green ink.

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY**

**Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE **  
**(**Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards**)**

_**Dear Mr. Potter,**_

_**We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.**_

_**Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.**_

_**Yours sincerely,**_  
_**Minerva McGonagall,**_  
_**Deputy Headmistress**_

The first feeling that overcame me was elation at the fact that Dumbledore was still headmaster. I would finally get to meet the man whose magic had crafted the powerful wards around my home.

I know I sounded like a rabid fan of Dumbledore. But hey, at that stage my meager knowledge only had his wards and a few comparatively shoddy wards to check out. Like I said earlier, his word surpassed the others by miles.

Then the rest of the words registered and I realized that they were waiting for a reply by July 31st. Only a few days were left before they closed the registration and I had no idea how to send a reply by then. Owl?

I reluctantly went in, cornered aunt Petunia and after getting her to stop ignoring me got the information that the wizarding world used owls as carrier pigeons. I reminded her that if the school did not get a reply, they were liable to send someone to come and collect me. That spurred her to tell me the address of a post box that muggles could use to get letters into the wizarding world.

Further enquiry about the place to go buy items required for school, she shut up tighter than a clam and completely refused to tell me where to go. A mind probe let me know that she was hoping that I would not be able to school without the required items.

The only thing that I got out of it was the name 'Diagon alley'. Her memory of the place was very fuzzy. It seemed that she could not even see the place unless Lily accompanied her. She also had not gone there in almost fifteen years and had made a constant attempt to forget about the place. She did not remember the way there.

So off I went to my new room, flicking an envelop and stamp from uncle Vernon's desk on the way. Remembering that the Dursley's had refused to pay for anything related to the magical world or help me in anyway reach it stumped me for a moment.

I already knew that James Potter had been quite well off, but was not sure if any of that money had survived the war. Aunt Petunia knew that there was a bank run by goblins and that the wizarding currency was composed of gold, silver and bronze coins. Would I have any legacy left in the wizarding world? I thought for a few moments and composed the following letter.

_**Dear deputy Headmistress McGonagall,**_

_**My name is Harry Potter and I received a letter from you informing me that I have been accepted to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I would be very glad to attend a school of magic.**_

_**I was able to find out from my relatives that magic actually exists and some strange occurrences in my early life are now explained. They have very recently informed me of the hidden world where you all live and that my parents were part of it and that they were killed when I was one by some maniacs. They had let me believe till then that my parents died in a car crash. That is my extent of knowledge of the magical world.**_

_**Unfortunately, my relatives are very against me learning any magic and have refused to pay for any fees or the supplies needed. They are not aware of any money my parents left behind following their deaths. If there is any please let me know. If not, is there any scholarship that I can apply for? **_

_**If I am able to afford the fees and supplies, I am still ignorant about the place where I can shop for the requirements. My relatives are unable to recollect the address of the place where I can go and purchase the necessary supplies. My aunt was only aware of the address of the PO Box where I could send the letter so it would be routed to Hogwarts School. **_

_**I would highly appreciate you helping me out by answering some of these questions or at least sending me the address of a person who would be able to help me out with them. I would like to find out more about my parents and hope you would be able to put me in contact with a former friend or classmate of theirs that could help me understand better. I hope my parents had some friends in our world.**_

_**Yours sincerely,**_

_**Harry Potter**_

I was in no hurry to inform anyone that I had literally magicked information right out of my relative's heads. Even though I had no way of knowing it, I was sure that picking out thoughts out of other people's heads without prior consent was forbidden even in the magical world.

Hopefully the McGonagall lady would get just enough information out of my letter to believe that I was mostly ignorant of my heritage and put me in contact with some friend of my parents. Hopefully, that Black guy who seemed to be a very good friend of dad's.

The moment I finished writing the letter, I felt a tiny surge of magic near me. Turning around, I realized that it had come from the envelop that had only contained the acceptance letter from Hogwarts. Looking inside, there was another sheet of parchment. Opening and glancing at it, I found a list of school supplies.

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY**

**UNIFORM**

_**First-year students will require:**_

_**1. Three sets of plain work robes (Black)**_

_**2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear**_

**3. One **_**pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)**_

_**4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)**_

_**Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags.**_

**COURSE BOOKS**

_**All students should have a copy of each of the following:**_

_**The standard book of spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk**_

_**A history of magic by Batilda Bagshot**_

_**Magical theory by Adalbert waffling**_

_**A beginners guide to transfiguration by Emeric Switch**_

_**One thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phylida Spore**_

_**Magical Drafts and potions by Arsenius Jigger**_

_**Fantastic Bears and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander**_

_**The Dark Forces: A Guide to self Protection by Quentin Trimble**_

**OTHER EQUIPMENT**

_**1 wand**_

_**1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)**_

_**1 set of glass or crystal phials**_

_**1 telescope et**_

_**1 brass scales**_

_**Students may also bring an owl or cat or a road**_

**PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS**

Reading the list sent a thrill through me. The completely unexpected and strange list of items was fascinating. I hoped I would be able to go get the items soon.

I woke up every morning early enough to get the mail before my relatives and found a reply bearing the Hogwarts crest waiting for me three days later. Inside was the following reply,

**HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY**

**Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE**

**(**Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards**)**

_**Dear Mr. Potter,**_

_**We are rather surprised to understand that your relatives have so little information regarding your heritage. It is also quite shocking to understand that they are trying to prevent you from attending Hogwarts. Just as it is illegal for parents to prevent their children from having an education in the muggle world, it is also illegal to keep a magical child from attending school and gaining control of his or her magic. **__**You will attend Hogwarts school.**__** Your name has been in the registry from the time you were born.**_

_**Please do not worry about your finances in the wizarding world. Your parents left you sufficient funds for your schooling and the complete fees for the next seven years at Hogwarts has been paid in full.**_

_**There is quite a bit more than what you have mentioned you know that you will have to be informed of before entering the wizarding world. Someone will be coming on the morning of the 27th of July at 8 AM to talk to your relatives and answer your questions.**_

_**Yours sincerely,**_  
_**Minerva McGonagall**_  
_**Deputy Headmistress**_

Then I realized that it was the 27th already. It was around 7 AM right then and in one hour someone would be coming to talk to the Dursley's. Oops. There was no other option anyway. I had to let them know that one of the people they regarded as devils was going to come and disturb their normal and utterly boring day to day life.

Thinking back to the contents of the letter, it was very interesting to learn that it was illegal to prevent a magical child from attending a magical school. It should not have been surprising, after all, even in the normal world all children had to be educated.

No reason the wizarding world should have been different. I wondered what happened when parents or guardians refused to let their children go to Hogwarts. Was there any social service department that took the children away and kept them? Another question to ask whoever it was who came.

I went to the kitchen and started helping my aunt prepare food as usual for myself and the Dursley's. We all sat down and started to eat. I waited till the last moment and casually mentioned,

"Someone is going to come today in a short while and pick me up."

"What was that, boy?" asked my uncle and I replied, "Someone is coming to pick me up for some time. They are coming to take me shopping for school supplies in a few minutes and inform me about my parent's world."

Uncle Vernon turned purple so fast it was fascinating to see.

"Just a few days back you promised us that there would be no strange people coming here. You little rascal, who on earth gave you the permission to tell them they could come here?"

.

.  
And the doorbell rang.

We all turned towards it and the Dursley's turned white. Uncle Vernon turned towards me to say something but I was already gone from the table. I ran to the front door, wrenched it open and was immediately blinded by the myriad bright whites, purples, gold stars and shimmery boots that adorned the visitor.

I hastily stumbled back to see bright blue, twinkling eyes over half moon spectacles that were regarding me cheerily.

"May I please step in my dear child? We have a lot to discuss today" said a voice that was just as cheery as the smile that graced the wizened old face. A face from which fell a beard so long it was tucked into the individuals belt.

I stumbled back with shock at the sheer assault on my eyes and heard the thundering footsteps of my relatives who came behind me.

Turning around, I found uncle Vernon gaping at the strange old man standing in front of his house dressed more garishly than what all the hippies he had seen in his life combined. He started turning an interesting shade of red in anger and looked like he wanted to say something when a polite and slightly amused voice was heard coming from the old man.

"Good morning Mr. Dursley. My name is Albus Dumbledore. I am the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and have come here to answer some questions about young Mr. Potter's schooling. May I come in? It seems that we have quite a few things to talk about."

"What?... Who?... Why?... Boy... " He sputtered before realizing that in the presence of a grown up wizard there was little he could do. He then realized that there was a garishly dressed, utterly abnormal freak standing in his front doorsteps and that his neighbors could see him.

"Get in soon. Don't just stand there and make everyone think we associate with people like you." he hissed in annoyance and anger.

"Thank you . Ah, Petunia its been quite some time. I can see that your roses are growing very well. My congratulations on maintaining such an excellent garden."

I turned around and saw that my aunt had just stepped into the living room and was staring at Dumbledore in shock. A myriad of emotions crossed her face in a few seconds. Anger, fear, disgust and finally resignation.

"Just get in will you. Let's get it over it. The sooner we are rid of you people from my home, the better." She sniffed with her nose up in the air.

"Of course, Petunia. Shall we all move to the hall? I believe your husband would appreciate your neighbors not catching sight of me."

So off we all marched from the front door, me wondering how things were going to pan out the next few minutes.

As soon as we were all seated, uncle Vernon started off, "Lets get one thing straight Mr. Dumbledore, I never wanted this boy here. I had half a mind here to send him to the orphanage the day we found him dumped on my doorsteps like a bottle of milk. but, out of the goodness of our hearts and our faith in God we have kept him safe all this while."

"I'm sure young Harry here appreciates your sacrifices Mr. Dursley. He seems to have grown into a strapping young man."

"Thankful, my foot... Little cretin started threatening us with his freakishness the last month. We tried our best to remove the evil from his soul. It most definitely has not worked"

I saw Dumbledore's eyes widening. Seeing that my reputation was being tarnished, I just had to protest at this stage. "I never threatened you. I just informed you that I had realized that I was a wizard and that there was no way you were preventing me from being a good one. You never told me anything about my world until I found out on my own and proved to you that you would not be able to stop me."

Turning to Dumbledore, "What was I supposed to do? Get beaten up just because they thought they were preventing me from being a demon from hell? I never used magic on them. Only shielded myself when uncle Vernon tried to hit me for accidentally letting a snake out of its enclosure at the zoo."

"Ah, of course? I heard about that investigation by the Ministry. They were at a loss as to the perpetrator of that particular incidence. Its good to know that it was nothing more than a case of accidental magic."

He paused, the genial smile dropped off his face. His voice remained very cordial, but had a slight chill as he turned to Petunia and said, "Am I to gather from what you all have said and the letter that young Mr. Potter sent the school that he was not informed of his abilities beforehand?"

"Of course they never told me that I was a wizard. I guessed that I was different when weird things happened around me. I hid the fact from them. After the incidence in the zoo, we finally had a honest talk and I found out the truth."

"I see. It seems that you have been able to resolve a lot of issues on your own Harry. I will not interfere more than necessary with your family. You seem quite capable of taking care of your own."

He turned to the Dursley's and said, "The magical world will be very disappointed if it finds out that your nephew has been mistreated due to your lack of understanding of what we consider to be sacred. I hope that you will not take any undue action on Harry for his defensive action. I will make sure to talk to him about responsible use of his abilities."

"Harry, let us move out. We have a lot to discuss. This visit to your home has been _most_ illuminating. It is time you learned something about yourself.", Turning to the Dursley's, "Vernon, Petunia, Dudley, I hope, to never trouble you with my presence anytime soon. Do take care." and walked out of the house with me trotting along.

He stopped outside the gate, turned around and looked at me over half-moon glasses.

"My dear boy, it seems that things have not gone as well as I'd expected them to. I will do my best to rectify certain oversights. But first, let us have an adventure. We are going to Diagon Alley, the best place to buy all items required by a first year student at Hogwarts. I will do my best to answer your questions during that time. Are you ready?" He asked.

A hundred different questions clamored for attention in my mind. I took a deep breath, calmed myself and after a moment's hesitation said, "Of course Sir. Lead the way, I'm ready."

On hearing my reply, Albus Dumbledore smiled. His eyes gained a mischievous twinkle. He extended his hand to me and said, "Grab hold then, let us proceed. We will be travelling by a method known as Apparation. It might be quite disconcerting the first time, but you will get the hang of it in time."

I practically grabbed the offered hand in my haste to experience some magic. The elder wizard practically beamed at my enthusiasm.

He slightly twisted his body away from me and with a squeezing sensation enveloped me as we popped away to the world of magic.

**Author's note:**

I am sorry for the immense delay in the story. I'm sure many of my readers gave up on me. I struggle with writing. I hope this chapter has improved since my first. Please read and review. Feedback and criticism is highly appreciated. Hope you enjoyed reading this chapter.


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